Paper Monsters
by Mai Kusakabe
Summary: In a world where Rosinante never overheard Law's full name, Law remained with the Donquixote Pirates and eventually became the third Corazon. As a dying child, all he had wanted was revenge on the world. However, when he started to truly live, his worldview changed as he grew.
1. Chapter 1

Well, here I am with the Law-centric story I've mentioned a few times. I intended to post it yesterday for Law's birthday, but I had a pretty chaotic day and couldn't even get anywhere near my computer, so I'm posting it today. The story is complete (though I intend to revise the last part, so the final length might vary a little), and it will be updated every Friday :)

I originally started this story because there is something that always bothered me in the manga: people insist on how Law was just like Doflamingo as a child, and Law himself says more than once that Cora-san was the only reason he didn't become like Doflamingo. While I understand Law believing it, I think that if Law had truly been a mini-Doflamingo, no amount of influence from anyone would have changed him to the point of being the man we've seen in the manga. So here is my exploration of Law's journey as a member of the Donquixote Pirates.

I hope you like it ^^

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

There was a shriek and Doflamingo, along with Gladius and Jora, stood from the meeting room's table and ran out of the room. That was Baby 5's voice.

"LAW!" they heard Baby 5 again, and yes, there was Law's presence with her, along with Buffalo.

Doflamingo was the first to reach the hallway, where he saw a distressed Baby 5 kneeling on the floor and shaking Law —who was breathing heavily and clearly unconscious— while Buffalo stood behind her and looked at the scene..

Doflamingo approached and knelt next to Baby 5.

"What happened?"

"I don't know!" Baby 5 answered frantically, and she only stopped shaking Law when Doflamingo took her by the shoulder.

"We were talking, and then he dropped, just like that," Buffalo explained. "It was almost like he'd died!"

By now, half of the Family had gathered around them.

"And just when we've got news of the Ope Ope no Mi," Trebol observed. "This kid is really unlucky," he laughed, but Doflamingo wasn't paying attention.

He reached out a hand and placed it on Law's forehead. He was running a high fever.

"Hey, Jora, get something to break his fever. I'm taking him to his room."

Jora hurried to obey, and Baby 5 moved out of the way when Doflamingo reached out to lift Law in his arms. Not for the first time, he noticed how small Law was, looking more like the ten year old they had first met instead of the thirteen years old he was now.

Law's room was close, the same organized chaos of neatly classified notes, scattered books and messy bed covers as ever, and Doflamingo moved those covers out of the way before laying Law down on the mattress and covering him.

"You've been hiding the symptoms, haven't you?" he asked, though there was no way he could receive an answer. Doflamingo knew enough about the Amber Lead Syndrome to realize that it didn't escalate so suddenly, which could only mean Law had been dealing with his worsening condition without letting anyone notice.

Doflamingo shook his head. Law hated to show any weaknesses, and he was incredibly stubborn.

Reaching out, he lifted Law's head to take his hat off and placed it on the nightstand.

He hoped Law's stubbornness would hold. Three weeks, that was all they needed.

Oh, Law had been very skeptical when he had been told about the Ope Ope no Mi and its properties, but he had shrugged and said that he didn't have anything to lose by trying it anyway.

* * *

"Is it true that there's a trade for the Ope Ope no Mi?" Rosinante asked right away, and Sengoku immediately started to cough on the other end of the line. He had probably been eating.

"H-How do you know that?! It's supposed to be a secret!"

Not a very good one, given the amount of information that had been leaked, Rosinante thought.

"Doffy got news of it this morning. Very detailed ones. Everything from the parties involved in the exchange to the time and place for it."

Sengoku cursed and stayed silent for a moment.

"He's going to go for it, isn't he?"

"That's the plan." The entire morning had been taken up by preparations for the operation, with orders to gather as much information as possible on the Barrels Pirates and the island where the transaction would be done.

"...Very well. Get out of there as soon as you can. This wasn't supposed to happen, but we'll use this chance to stop the Donquixote Pirates. I don't want you anywhere near them in three weeks' time."

"Understood."

* * *

Rosinante had, since he returned to Doflamingo's side, been ready to disappear at a moment's notice. He had accumulated many belongings over the past four years, but few of them truly mattered to him, and he always carried them on himself. Doflamingo had what could almost be called an obsession for owning many material possessions, and buy them for those he called his family. It was, honestly, one of the few things Rosinante could understand about him.

Rosinante had passed Senor Pink and Lao G, who had returned to the ship carrying large suitcases, and had seen Diamante and Macvise leaving. This morning, amongst other things, it had been decided they would finish their business at this island as soon as possible and head back to their base of operations. Doflamingo had said they would move it after they had the fruit.

Rosinante would slip away right when the ship left the island. He had everything ready.

Before that happened, he wanted to see someone.

The door was open, and Baby 5 was sitting in a chair next to Law's bed, her legs swinging restlessly in the air.

Law was still unconscious.

Baby 5 turned her head when she heard him enter the room. Her eyes widened and she jumped to her feet, placing herself between Rosinante and the bed.

"You can't bully him today, Corazon!" she exclaimed, even though they both knew she wouldn't stand in his way if he decided to attack Law. Or maybe she would, because she was stupidly loyal like that. "The Young Master said Law needs to rest."

If Doflamingo had said that, then she _would_ attack Rosinante if she thought she had to. She was too fixated on following orders for her own good.

Rosinante approached her, grabbed her by the top of her head and threw her out of the room through the open door. He pulled out the pen and notepad he always carried on himself and scribbled a quick note. He showed it to her.

 _'I don't beat unconscious people'_.

She hesitated, biting her lower lip. He wrote something else.

 _'Now get lost'_.

And that was it. Baby 5 couldn't resist a direct order. With a worried glance at the bed, she left.

Rosinante closed the door and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He created a bubble of silence around them so nobody would be able to hear anything.

"I'm sorry," he said, aware that there was no way Law could hear him, unconscious as he was. "Doffy really intends to use the Ope Ope no Mi to heal you, but the price we'd all have to pay if he gets his hands on it is too high."

He placed a hand on Law's damp forehead. His fever had broken, at least. Not that it would matter for long.

"I'm not going to lie to you: I don't know who intends to eat the fruit in the marines, if anyone does, but I doubt they'd want to heal you. Even if they did, they wouldn't be allowed to do it. The other kids will be given leniency, Sengoku promised me that, but you..." He rubbed a hand over his face. Even though he worked for the government, he sometimes hated their methods and their people. Some of them weren't so different from Doflamingo. "You're a survivor from Flevance. Many will see that as too much of a risk: you could ruin the good image they are trying to uphold. That the first thing you did when you escaped was join Doflamingo will only make you appear more dangerous in their eyes. And you want to be like him. Sometimes you _are_ so much like him you scare me."

Rosinante buried his face in his hands.

"I'm sorry, Law," he whispered, "but stopping Doffy means you will die."

It didn't matter how much he told himself this way he would stop another Doflamingo, someone Rosinante could already see had the potential to be very dangerous, from being unleashed on the world in a few years' time. The truth remained he was taking away a thirteen year old boy's only chance of survival.

Law's death would haunt him forever.

* * *

Law grew slowly aware of what surrounded him, rising to consciousness so progressively that he couldn't tell, exactly, when he had woken up. Making his eyelids obey him took far more effort than it should have. His body felt heavy, even heavier than it had felt lately, and it was harder to breathe. He didn't bother to try to raise his head.

There was a loud gasp next to him, and a dark shadow appeared above, taking up most of his field of vision. It was Baby 5, he recognized a moment later, her features dimmed by the faint light that came in through the window.

"You're awake!" she exclaimed, smiling at him.

Law blinked up at her. Last thing he remembered, he had been walking down a hallway with Baby 5 and Buffalo, but now he was here. He must have lost consciousness. He didn't remember fainting, but he had to admit he wasn't surprised it had happened.

It had been just a matter of time.

"How are you feeling?" She asked, probably realizing he wasn't going to say anything.

"Wonderful," he answered dryly, but his voice came out weaker than he would have liked.

"Do you need anything?" Baby 5 asked, unfazed by his reply. Almost every kind of unfriendly responses, except for the outright aggressive ones, bounced right off her.

 _Painkillers_ , Law thought bitterly, but he wasn't going to say it out loud. He refused to admit to such weakness. Besides, the pain was still bearable. It wouldn't be for long, that Law knew too well. He had seen enough people suffer and die from his same symptoms to know exactly how the illness would worsen.

"No," he answered instead.

"Really? Aren't you hungry?"

"No." Not at all. It was something else that had started to affect him: during the last two months, Law had been slowly losing his appetite. Nobody had noticed, but for the last week he had been basically forcing himself to eat.

"...Oh," she breathed, taking a step back from the bed. "You should eat, you've been asleep almost a day."

Law snapped his head to the side to look at her more directly.

"A _day_?!"

Baby 5 nodded.

"We're almost ready to leave now."

Law sighed.

"Alright, bring me something to eat." He didn't want it, but he had to try to maintain his strength.

Baby 5 grinned brightly at him and turned around.

"I'll tell the Young Master you're awake!" she announced before dashing out of the room. She had opened the door with such strength that it bounced on the wall and slammed shut after her.

Law closed his eyes.

Doflamingo... Earlier —no, _yesterday_ — he had told Law about a devil fruit they had received news on, one that allegedly could heal any illness. The Ope Ope no Mi. Law was very skeptical about what he had been told: it sounded too much like something out of a fairy tale. He had long since accepted his death, and he wouldn't allow himself to think of a _future_ now of all times. If it worked, wonderful, but Law wasn't going to hold on to any kind of hope that it would.

He was too tired for that.

* * *

They had left the port. Preparations had been a little hurried, and maybe they hadn't done everything they had intended at this island, but the Ope Ope no Mi took precedence over everything else.

Alerted by his haki, Doflamingo stood from his seat by the main mast and headed inside the ship. Sure enough, he encountered Law halfway to the mess hall, dragging his feet with obvious effort and supporting himself with a hand against the wall.

"Shouldn't you stay in bed?" Doflamingo asked him. He had tasked Baby 5 with checking on Law periodically and bringing him food. If Law wanted anything, he just had to wait for her next visit and ask.

"Would you?" Law asked back, and Doflamingo chuckled.

No, he wouldn't. Law really resembled him in many things. Doflamingo hadn't been wrong in his first impression.

Walking up to Law, Doflamingo scooped down to grab Law around the waist and continue walking to the mess hall.

"Oi, put me down!" Law yelled at him, indignant, but Doflamingo ignored him.

The last thing they needed now was for Law to unnecessarily waste energy. He had to rest and hold out for three more weeks, and if that meant they had to carry him around because he refused to stay in bed, then Law would have to deal with the indignity.

* * *

It wasn't until a few hours later, when most of the Family was eating dinner, that Doflamingo realized there was something wrong.

"Where's Corazon?" he asked the room at large.

"Dunno, haven't seen him since breakfast," Macvise was the first to reply.

"He was loading some boxes around mid-morning," Lao G added.

Then, when nobody else spoke, they exchanged some looks across the table. They had set sail before lunch.

"Has anyone seen him since we left?" Doflamingo asked, already guessing the response.

Headshakes all around the table.

"You think he got lost or something?" Diamante asked with a laugh, but threw a worried look at Doflamingo as soon as the others were distracted with ridiculous speculations of whatever accident might have caused Corazon to stay behind.

Doflamingo really hoped it had been an accident.

He had had his suspicions about Corazon for around a year now, but no real proof to cement them. He had shared them with his other three executives and kept them hidden from the rest of the Family. There was no reason to worry everybody. Yet.

"We're going back," he announced.

Doflamingo really hoped they would find Corazon panicked at the port and trying to hitch a ride, because it wasn't fun to suspect his own brother of treason.

* * *

They hadn't found Corazon. Law could gather as much looking at everybody's faces as they returned one by one to the ship. Doflamingo was the last one to come back, announcing grimly that he had run the skies all over the island and hadn't sensed Corazon's presence anywhere.

Law wondered if this meant now Doflamingo would share with the crew whatever secret message had been passed between him and Diamante last night after they had discovered Corazon was missing.

He did.

A traitor. They suspected Corazon was the reason the marines found them so often.

Law wasn't sure what to think about it. Corazon was an idiot. Then again, idiocy was a very good cover if one wanted to be underestimated.

If Corazon was really a traitor, he had to be long gone by now. Everybody in the crew knew the price of betrayal in the Donquixote Pirates, and Law doubted even the most stupid person would risk that by staying around.

* * *

Corazon's disappearance meant that they had to change their plans for the Ope Ope no Mi. Not only the preparations to retrieve it, but also for their posterior use of the fruit. After all, Doflamingo's original plan had been for Corazon to eat it.

The door to the sitting room opened —they were back at their soon-to-be former base of operations now— and Gladius and Senor Pink walked in, just as Doflamingo had requested.

"Did you call?" Gladius asked, and Doflamingo nodded, gesturing for them to take a seat.

Senor Pink's eyes traveled to Law, curled up in one of the couches and covered with a blanket, before going to sit down next to Gladius. It had become clear early on that Law wouldn't just stay in bed like a good little patient —Doflamingo had once heard doctors made for the worst patients, and now he was seeing just how true that statement was— and they had reached a compromise: Law could be here and learn how things progressed as long as he stayed lying down. Not that it mattered much where he was, because Law spent more time asleep than awake by this point. Just as he was now.

"I have a mission for the two of you. A very important mission," Doflamingo told Gladius and Senor Pink.

* * *

Baby 5 pushed the chair across the floor until it was pressed against the lower half of the bookcase, then climbed on it and started throwing the books on the upper two shelves to the bed, careful not to damage any of them in the process.

They were leaving the base earlier than they had originally planned. The Young Master had said that they couldn't risk to stay here, because Corazon knew this location as well as their objective to steal the Ope Ope no Mi, and it was possible that the marines would show up here to stop them rather than give them a chance to take the fruit.

Baby 5 still couldn't believe that Corazon was a traitor. He was very violent, that was true, but Baby 5 liked him. He let them prank him and, while he hit them for it afterwards, he had never forbidden them from doing it or had them tortured as punishment, not even after the biggest pranks. His clumsiness was funny, and he never got angry at them when they laughed because he had fallen down or set himself on fire.

Baby 5 was going to miss him.

She jumped down from the chair and went to the bed, where all of Law's books were piled now. Law had asked Baby 5 to pack all the stuff he had in his room at the base, and Baby 5 was going to do her best to prove Law had made the right choice in asking her.

Law was feeling worse.

He tried to cover it up because he was too stubborn and prideful, but everybody had noticed that he could barely walk now. He didn't eat much either, and whatever he did eat cost him a great effort to swallow.

Law hurt so much that he was taking painkillers now.

Baby 5 didn't want Law to die.

She went outside and brought two empty boxes back to the room. These books were important; Law needed them to become the crew's doctor, and he would kill her once he was better if she forgot any of them.

 **To be continued**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Everybody was in a hurry.

Doflamingo had been thinking ever since Corazon had vanished and had decided the best course of action would be to make their move right away.

First of all, he had contacted Vergo. Vergo was part of the team in charge of the purchase of the Ope Ope no Mi, and it had been through him that Doflamingo had learned of the deal. According to Vergo, yesterday afternoon his group of marines had been notified that Vice Admiral Tsuru would be joining them for the operation, along with the information that they should expect the Donquixote Pirates to show up.

That was all the confirmation Doflamingo needed of Corazon's betrayal.

Soldiers had been dispatched from nearby bases to reinforce the marine troops already sent to monitor Rubeck and Minion islands. Vergo's unit, which had already departed from Headquarters a few days ago, wasn't expected to arrive for another five days. So far the only marines present were troops from the closest base, who had confirmed the Barrels Pirates were at their base in Minion Island.

Doflamingo hoped to arrive and steal the Ope Ope no Mi before Tsuru showed up, but he didn't know if that would be possible because Vergo hadn't managed to discover Tsuru's current location and there was no official estimated time of arrival.

* * *

Locating the marine ships stationed around Minion Island was easy, easier than it would have been if the Donquixote Family had arrived at the originally planned time, when no doubt the marines would have been better concealed.

Only two ships were here despite the reinforcements that had arrived in the day that it had taken the Donquixote Family to reach Minion. The bulk of the marines currently here were deployed at Rubeck, with another two ships stationed at Swallow. Despite the islands' proximity, it would take close to an hour for the first ships to arrive once the alarms were raised.

According to the maps, there was a small port at the ghost town the Barrels Pirates had taken as their own, and effectively their ship was there. Along with fifty marines hidden at various posts nearby, probably to monitor it. Barrels had, predictably, taken the largest building as his own base of operations, and his men —he had a surprisingly large crew for a former marine officer— had spread throughout the town. Despite their numbers, though, the crew seemed unaware of the marines' presence. Doflamingo had to give it to the marines, they knew how to be stealthy. Even from his vantage point in the overcast sky, he wouldn't have located some of them without his haki.

Minion's coast was as unhelpful as the map of the island had indicated. It was mostly made up by uneven rocks, too tall to disembark easily on a good day, positively treacherous with the heavy snow that covered the ground and had Doflamingo soaked amongst the clouds. The less uneven areas were monitored by small groups of marines hidden in the closest buildings. The only beach where a crew could have disembarked easily was crawling with hidden marines, and Doflamingo decided that if they were going to be seen anyway the moment they approached the island, they should go for the quickest path.

His mind made up, Doflamingo wound his way back through the clouds to his ship, that awaited a short ways off the island.

* * *

Law sat next to Baby 5, huddled in a blanket that didn't provide nearly enough warmth as he waited along with half of the crew for Doflamingo to return from his scouting trip. The rest were outside, looking out for any marines who might spot their ship and be stupid enough to decide to try to capture them. Except for Senor Pink and Gladius, who still hadn't returned from whatever mission Doflamingo had sent them off to complete a couple days ago.

They had eaten right before arriving here, and Law had, just like yesterday, downed more painkillers than were advisable. As frustrating as it was, at least he still didn't need to take the really strong ones.

"The Young Master is back!" Lao G called from outside, and everybody stood up and headed to the deck. Law moved to his feet, too, clenching his teeth and putting far too much effort into staying upright.

A small hand appeared on his shoulder.

"Shouldn't you stay inside?" Baby 5 asked with concern.

Law glared at her and brushed her hand off.

"I'm fine," he muttered, and started walking to the door. He had discovered that, at least for now, if he took slow steps he could walk without wobbling for a while.

Baby 5 followed him.

By the time they reached the deck everybody else was gathered around Doflamingo, who was explaining what he had seen.

They would disembark at the port and go straight for the Barrels Pirates' headquarters, in and out as quickly as they could manage.

Usually they took their time when they assaulted another crew, but this operation was nothing like their usual ones. Their objective was clear, and while there were no noteworthy opponents present so far, Law knew that Doflamingo didn't want to deal with a confrontation against Tsuru right now if it turned out she was close by already.

Law understood it. He had witnessed two fights between Doflamingo and Tsuru so far, and she was very strong. Besides, those fights were _long_.

"Law."

Law blinked and looked up, realizing that he had spaced out at some point.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"It would be best if you stayed behind," Doflamingo started, and Law frowned, ready to protest, "but it's likely the marines will try to take our ship if we're delayed and reinforcements arrive, so you'll be with me instead."

Law nodded, appeased by the knowledge that even if he couldn't fight he wasn't going to be left behind.

* * *

"What the _hell_?" Law practically growled, and Doflamingo chuckled.

"We need to move fast," he explained, adjusting his coat on his shoulders with his right hand.

"Are you sure about this, Young Master?" Jora asked, her lips twitching. "I could do it."

"No, it's fine," Doflamingo said, waving his hand. "I can fight just as well with one hand, and nobody will think to attack him if he's with me."

"I can take care of myself," Law snapped. "And _walk_."

"Under normal circumstances you can, true, but not now," Doflamingo told him, and that was the reason why he had decided the best option would be to carry Law.

Law objected to the idea, of course, and the way in which Doflamingo had chosen to carry him didn't help matters. Due to Law's short stature and Doflamingo's height their proportions were the same as those of an average-sized adult and a young toddler. Because of that, Doflamingo had decided that carrying Law on his hip was a better option than carrying him on his back. Law was hidden from sight by his coat in most angles this way, and Doflamingo could protect him much better.

Law found it humiliating. Doflamingo understood, his thirteen year old self would have killed anyone who so much as suggested an arrangement like this one to him, but it didn't change the fact that it was necessary.

The rest of the Family found it hilarious.

"You're just missing the onesie, Law!" Diamante said amidst his laughter, Trebol snorting even more snot down on the deck as his own laughter increased.

"Aw, I want to be carried like that too," Baby 5 said, a hand pressed to one of her cheeks. Buffalo was snickering behind her, and the rest weren't doing much better.

"I'm going to _kill_ the lot of you," Law muttered, but he wasn't squirming and trying to punch and kick his way back to the ground, like Doflamingo knew he would be doing if he really had the energy for it.

Instead, Law pulled his hat lower over his eyes and the blanket up over his mouth.

"Everybody ready?" Doflamingo asked, to nods, affirmations and a few leftover snickers. "Remember, the Ope Ope no Mi is our priority, but we're taking any other treasure they have."

There was no marine ship in sight, lest they alert the Barrels Pirates of their presence, but as soon as Doflamingo jumped out of his ship and into the port, marines started firing at him from their hiding places.

Doflamingo dodged the bullets and sent out a few _parasites_ to make the marines fight each other, but he largely left the task of taking care of the soldiers at the port to his crew, taking off at a run towards the base he had spotted earlier.

The ground trembled and a spider web of cracks appeared, immediately followed by astonished and scared screams, all of it indicating that Pica had taken control of an area of the town.

Law moved, holding onto Doflamingo's left arm with one hand while he pushed the coat aside with the other.

"You're supposed to stay hidden," Doflamingo scolded him, jumping and using _overheat_ against a nearby building from where a group of marines had been shooting. The façade caved in.

"I'm just watching," Law answered, pushing the coat a little further aside when some more screams were heard.

By the time Doflamingo landed back on the ground, there were some large cracks, result of one of Macvise's heavier drops.

Above them, Buffalo flew with Baby 5 on his back. She had turned one of her arms into a rifle and was shooting marines and pirates alike off the rooftops.

"There it is," Doflamingo said, stopping a street away from the building. He could sense a good number of people standing at the entrance, no doubt alerted by the battle that had taken up most of the town by now. They hadn't run into many pirates despite the ruckus, after all. "Get the coat down," he told Law, who complied and twisted around, so he was looking forward instead of back now.

Doflamingo started walking at a much more sedate pace. When he turned the corner he came face to face with fifty pirates assembled in two rows, aiming their guns at him. Most of them startled, some even faltered, when they recognized Doflamingo, and he decided to let the silence stretch just to see what they would do.

"What the hell's that kid doing there?" someone asked from the back row, and before anyone could shoot Doflamingo threw a barrage of threads at them, the threads slicing through weapons and flesh just as easily as they did through empty air.

Turning some of the pirates against their comrades, Doflamingo grabbed the closest of the men and pulled him apart from the group, now filled with screams and pleads for the controlled men to stop.

"Where's the fruit?" Doflamingo asked, but the man just shook his head. Doflamingo lifted him off the ground by the neck of his shirt. "The fruit," he repeated, not bothering to try to sound calm. "The Ope Ope no Mi."

The man shook his head again.

"Y-You're going to k-kill me anyway… I won't tell," the man stammered through his obvious fear, and Doflamingo chuckled, amused by his pathetic attempt at guts.

"Do you want to be tortured?"

Doflamingo looked down, surprised that Law had spoken.

"W-What?" the man, who was staring at Law with wide eyes, stammered again. He looked creeped out, and Doflamingo wasn't surprised: seeing small, sick and virtually defenseless Law ask that with his blank, indifferent expression and even voice was its own brand of disturbing.

Doflamingo decided to let Law reply.

"You're right, you're dead, but you'll die quickly if you answer. If you don't, you'll wish for death long before you actually die."

The man had paled further than he already was, and he shivered when Doflamingo chuckled a second time.

"You heard him. You can tell me and I'll snap your neck, or you can keep your silence and I'll leave you here, being skinned alive by my threads while I search the house. Tell me, is that fruit really worth it when you won't enjoy the money anyway?" Because that was all these people cared about, selling the Ope Ope no Mi and living a luxurious life. Fools.

The man shook his head frantically.

"Well?" Doflamingo asked.

"T-The treasury. On this floor. At the back."

He was saying the truth, he was far too terrified to lie convincingly. Nodding, Doflamingo snapped his neck and dropped the body to the ground.

By now the screams around were over and only one of his puppets remained, crying and begging for it to stop even though it had already stopped. With a snap of Doflamingo's fingers, the man aimed his own rifle below his jaw and fired.

"Well, let's have a look," Doflamingo said, walking to the main entrance of the building.

They were halfway across the ground floor when Law voiced the thought that had started bugging Doflamingo when they had entered.

"This place is too empty."

"Yes," Doflamingo agreed, looking around at the scattered couches and chairs, the fallen plates and the spilled mugs. "They left in a hurry, probably when they heard the fight."

Law pushed the coat aside to look up at Doflamingo.

"We haven't run into Barrels, have we?"

Doflamingo shook his head.

"No, and I doubt that scumbag would go anywhere without the fruit." But the building was empty, Doflamingo could tell as much.

Just then, they heard the noise of running feet, and turned to the door. Trebol, Lao G and Jora —who had Dellinger at her hip— ran in.

"Have you guys run into Barrels?" Doflamingo asked immediately. They stopped, looked at one another and shook their heads.

"Why? What happened, Doffy?" Trebol asked.

Doflamingo sighed and cursed under his breath.

"There's a treasury back there." He waved towards the back of the building. "Grab everything, then comb the building. I don't think the fruit is here, though. Did anyone stay at the port?"

"Pica is there," Trebol replied.

Doflamingo nodded. That was good.

"Get the others to help as they show up. I'm going to find Barrels."

* * *

Diez Barrels hadn't come so far to die now.

The Donquixote Pirates, the fucking Donquixote Pirates had shown up and attacked so close to the date of the deal that would ensure Barrels lived the best life money could buy. Barrels was no idiot, he knew they were here for the fruit, the same fruit he carried in the box he was holding close to his chest as he ran.

The fruit the marines had been monitoring for weeks. Oh, they had gone to great lengths to hide their presence, but Barrels had been part of their ranks for years and he had known they would come the moment the deal had been made. He hadn't _seen_ any marines, but he knew the areas they would monitor. Like the beach.

That was where he was going now. He had sent his men to fight as soon as they had heard the battle, and when he had identified the flag of the ship that had just arrived he had realized they could do nothing but gain some time for his escape. The Donquixote Pirates were on an entirely different level from all other pirate crews in North Blue.

So Barrels ran.

The marines wanted the fruit, and they would get him out of here alive. He had thought of bringing Dory along, he was by far the strongest person in his crew and could have gained Barrels time if necessary, but Barrels hadn't seen him anywhere and he didn't have the time to look.

It seemed today Dory would be as much of a useless coward as every time they needed his power.

Barrels skidded to a halt, barely managing to avoid crashing into what had fallen to block his path. What seemed to be a ball of pink feathers. Very characteristic pink feathers.

His breath caught as he watched in mounting horror how Donquixote Doflamingo straightened before him.

"You have something that I want," Doflamingo said, the same wide grin from his wanted poster stretching his lips. That grin had been, and probably still was, one of the worst fears of the marines in North Blue, because very few ships that had engaged the Donquixote Pirates survived to tell the tales. Those tales weren't nice.

Barrels had no delusions. _Vice Admiral Tsuru_ had been chasing Doflamingo for years and hadn't managed to capture him. Barrels knew that he was a dead man unless he found a way to escape.

That was when his eyes fell on Doflamingo's side. More accurately, on the very sick-looking kid held to Doflamingo's side.

Barrels wouldn't have managed to hold back his incredulous laugh even if he had wanted to.

"You're altruistic now, Doflamingo?" Because the fact of Doflamingo carrying a half-dead kid while he sought out a fruit renowned for its capabilities to heal any illness amounted to something too hilarious in Barrels' mind.

The scene gave him an idea.

Barrels' hand hadn't even closed around the handle of his gun when a bullet buried itself in his skull. He was dead before he could even realize it hadn't been Doflamingo who pulled the trigger.

* * *

Doflamingo looked down at Law and the gun he still had aimed at Barrels' body. Law hadn't been armed when they had left the ship.

"When did you take that?" Doflamingo asked, because he hadn't noticed Law taking his gun from his coat pocket. He had probably been too distracted.

"When the fight started," Law replied, lowering the gun. "I don't like to be unarmed."

Chuckling —he really hadn't thought that Law might want to carry a weapon for this— Doflamingo patted Law on the head and walked over to Barrels' body. He crouched next to it and took the box from Barrels' now limp hand.

Sure enough, when he opened the box the Ope Ope no Mi was inside.

"Is that it?" Law asked, twisting in Doflamingo's grip so he could look inside.

"Yes, this is it." Doflamingo tilted the box forward so Law could see the fruit better. "With this fruit you will live, and I will be immortal."

Doflamingo felt a rush of excitement run through him. After years of learning of its existence, after years of combing the world for anyone who might be its user and the underworld for hints of the fruit itself, here it was. In his hands.

Doflamingo could laugh right now. Here was one of his ambitions, just days short of becoming a reality.

Closing the box, Doflamingo rose to his feet.

"Let's go meet the others."

* * *

They were nearly done collecting the treasure the Barrels Pirates had stored in their headquarters. One of the many results of their long time as pirates was that the Donquixote Family was practiced in the art of storing and taking away valuables, and they did it quickly and efficiently.

Trebol and Macvise had just returned to take a second load of bags and treasure chests with them —there was _a lot_ of treasure here, and while the entire Family would have been able to carry it away in one trip, they were a few members short at the moment.

Diamante was keeping watch with two large bags by his feet at the building's main entrance, and was the first one to spot Doffy as he jumped down from a nearby building, Law still held to his side and a box in his other hand.

"You got it?" Diamante asked.

"Right here," replied Doffy, waving the box. "Are you guys done?"

Diamante turned around and spotted Macvise approaching through the dark large room that made up most of the building's ground floor, Trebol at his back.

"Yeah, this is the last load."

They found no opposition running back to the ship: the streets were littered with bodies and most buildings were damaged —some of them had even been reduced to rubble— but if there were any enemies left they didn't dare show themselves. Once at the port they found the remaining members of the Family already waiting onboard the ship, and Baby 5 ran to Doffy as soon as Doffy had jumped on deck to ask if he had the fruit.

As he climbed on board, Diamante absentmindedly noticed the remnants of a ship floating around. The Barrels Pirates' ship was still undamaged at port, which meant a marine vessel had arrived while they were gone.

Their business complete, the Donquixote Family left Minion Island with no major complications.

* * *

"You don't have good news," Rosinante said as soon as he answered Sengoku's call. He was currently at the G-2 base, waiting for a ship that headed for Marine Headquarters to arrive.

Rosinante already knew what Sengoku was going to tell him, because he had been listening in on the calls from North Blue ever since he had arrived at the base, and not even two hours ago there had been desperate pleas for help coming from the troops stationed at Minion Island. Rosinante knew how it had ended even without any official report, and there was a destroyed room around him to show just what his reaction to the news had been.

"Not at all. Tsuru had just reached North Blue when Doflamingo attacked Minion. He has the fruit and we don't know where he is."

"His headquarters are empty I presume?" It was an unnecessary question, because that had been part of the original plan Doflamingo had come up with, and obviously the only one that hadn't changed. He hadn't thought Doflamingo would act so fast. No one had, otherwise Rosinante would have stayed with the Donquixote Pirates longer to give the marines more time to prepare.

Doflamingo's information network had to be better than what Rosinante or Sengoku had believed.

"It looks like they left immediately."

Rosinante clenched his free hand into a fist and took a deep breath. It couldn't be that _everything_ had been for nothing.

"What about the list of contacts I gave you?" Rosinante had managed to gain information on many of Doflamingo's business partners, and while some names wouldn't really matter —already known criminals that moved as much or more than the Donquixote Pirates did— others were very interesting, to put it simply.

Sengoku was silent for a long moment, and Rosinante didn't like it. It had been nearly three days since he had given Sengoku the names, locations and as much information on Doflamingo's dealings as he had managed to gather; surely the government had been able to look over it by now.

"…Investigation of most of the bigger names has been vetoed."

Rosinante's jaw fell slack, and the cigarette between his lips fell too. With no coat to set on fire, it dropped harmlessly on the stone floor.

" _By whom_?" Rosinante demanded, and it took all his willpower not to yell at Sengoku. If he started, he wouldn't stop in a long while.

"The Tenryuubito."

Rosinante cursed, kicked the remnants of a bed frame into a wall and dropped on his back. Doflamingo had something on the Tenryuubito, Rosinante had known as much. Unfortunately, _what_ that something was exactly was one of the few things he hadn't managed to uncover.

"You know what Doffy's got on them, don't you?"

"I have my suspicions," Sengoku replied, as evasive as ever, and Rosinante very nearly growled at him. This time, however, Sengoku added something more. "I don't think they'll allow for us to try shutting down Doflamingo's operations until he's caught and not a threat to them anymore. That some of his operations benefit them is just an additional reason to intervene."

"Fucking wonderful," Rosinante muttered. He hung up without another word and stood up. He needed to vent some of his anger out somehow, and decided to take a page out of Vice Admiral Garp's book and head for the base's training grounds.

 **To be continued**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Doflamingo rocked back and forth on his feet, somewhat impatiently waiting for the door he was standing in front of to open. It was cold outside, his breath clouding before his face, the air chilled to the point of feeling almost like it was cutting his skin and a light but steady snowfall was covering the streets, adding to the snow that had already been piled up against the buildings. It was dark at this hour, over an hour past dinner time. Combined with the cold it meant nobody was out at the street, which suited Doflamingo's purpose. The less people who saw him, the less likely it was that somebody would panic and call the marines. This island was far enough from Minion that he doubted Tsuru would be nearby. She was still combing North Blue with her small marine army even though it had been three days since they stole the Ope Ope no Mi.

Gladius had called early in the morning to inform that he and Senor Pink had found the perfect candidate, plus a few backups in case this one didn't turn out as expected, and Doflamingo had ordered to change the ship's course. The ship was currently anchored at a somewhat tricky stretch of coast that wasn't visible from the village, everybody on board except for Gladius and Senor Pink, who were hidden along this same street to keep an eye out just in case. The only person who had come down from the ship with Doflamingo was Law, who had insisted on walking the distance himself ("This is no battle, _I can walk_.") and was currently standing next to Doflamingo, wrapped in a thick blanket that hid his face almost entirely from view and attempting not to shiver too noticeably.

The door opened at last. On the other side stood a middle aged man with a polite smile plastered on his face, smile that froze the moment recognition crossed his eyes.

"M-May I help you?" he asked, nearly managing to keep his fear out of his voice. He moved closer to the gap of the door, as if he could somehow block it if Doflamingo decided to force his way in.

Doflamingo ignored the defensive gesture.

"Doctor Rayne?" Doflamingo asked, though he already knew the answer. Rayne nodded. "Yes, you may help us," Doflamingo said, very pointedly placing a hand on Law's head.

Rayne looked down, the surprise in his eyes making it clear he hadn't noticed Law's presence until then. Huddled in the blanket as he was and with the hat obscuring most of his face, there was no visible trace of the Amber Lead Syndrome for Rayne to notice: Law looked just like a shivering and clearly sick little boy. Rayne's eyes softened, proving one of the reasons why he was their prime candidate, and he stepped back from the door.

"Come to my office," he said, letting them in.

There were two doors in the entrance room: one of them was open and clearly led into the house proper. Rayne led them to the closed door, opened it and entered the room. The lights flickered on, revealing a small, modest office with a desk, one chair placed behind it and two before it, a bookshelf to one side, examination stretcher to the other and a closed second door at the right side behind the one chair. Rayne settled himself on that chair, Law reluctantly hopped on one of the visitors' chairs, blanket still firmly wrapped around him, and Doflamingo had to take his coat off to be able to fold himself on the second visitors' chair. He draped his coat across his lap.

"What is the issue?" Rayne asked, settling behind a calm mask that Doflamingo guessed was his professional façade.

Doflamingo looked at Law, who had his head bent down in a gesture Doflamingo knew to be just stubbornness. Law had been outraged at the knowledge that they would be coming to see a doctor, and had outright refused at first —his first reaction that could be called as that of a normal kid, and the Family members had hurried to point out how creepy it was to see Law act that way— and had only reluctantly agreed to come along when Doflamingo had explained the plan. Still, Law had been sulking all day.

Slowly and somewhat jerkily, Law pushed the blanket down to uncover his face and looked up with a challenging and clearly defensive glare.

Rayne's gasp was drowned by the sound of his chair scraping on the floor when he pushed away from the table and up to his feet.

"T-That's—" he stammered, even more scared now than he had been when he opened the door.

"Not contagious," Doflamingo snapped, fixing Rayne with a glare through his sunglasses. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Law's hands fisting on the blanket, skin even whiter than usual, and Law's head bent down again.

Doflamingo really couldn't stand the kind of stupidity that led people to believe anything they were told if they thought the source to be reliable enough.

"W-What?" Rayne asked, blinking stupidly with his eyes still fixed on Law.

Doflamingo scoffed.

"Amber Lead Syndrome is not a contagious illness," he enunciated slowly. "Amber Lead is a toxic substance that poisoned the inhabitants of Flevance."

By now, Law was biting his lower lip and his right hand was trembling. It was the kind of reaction that usually preceded Law storming out to the shooting range to vent his emotions away.

"But the government…" Rayne started, trailing off before Doflamingo could interrupt him. He was still staring at Law, and there was a note of horror creeping into his voice. Doflamingo knew that Law's reaction was the reason why Rayne was even considering believing him.

"They lied. They do that. A lot," Doflamingo said, annoyance heavy in his voice. Flevance was the second island the World Government had played a direct role in destroying in under a decade, and yet very few people stopped to consider that maybe not all the information the government fed them was true.

It was pathetic.

Rayne sat back down slowly. His eyes were wide, and Doflamingo wasn't sure if he had blinked at all since he stood up.

"But, even then…" Rayne started. "I don't know what to do in this case, there's no information on Amber Lead Syndrome anywhere!" he said, somewhere between defensive and slightly horrified. He wet his lower lip. "Maybe…" he started dubiously, and Doflamingo could tell not even he was sure of what he was going to say next.

"You don't have to find a cure, doctor, we already have it," Doflamingo cut him off.

"…Oh," Rayne blinked, and looked at Doflamingo for the first time since Law had uncovered his face. "You need me to administer it?" he asked, far more relaxed than he had been since their arrival.

"More or less." Doflamingo lounged as best as he could in the tiny, hard chair. "Tell me, doctor, I've heard you have a daughter." Rayne's back went ramrod straight and all color drained from his face. "Lin, wasn't it? How old is she?"

He could see the struggle in Rayne's face as he quickly debated with himself how to reply, survival instinct and fatherly love vying for dominance.

"S-Seven," he replied finally, probably figuring out he had more chances of keeping his family safe if he did not anger Doflamingo.

"Seven, right. She's sick, isn't she? Brain cancer, and you've exhausted any chance to save her." Rayne's hands were clenched on the table and he was biting the inside of his left cheek hard enough that it wouldn't surprise Doflamingo if he had drawn blood. _Good_ , Doflamingo thought. He tilted his head to look at Law. "How long did she have? I don't remember." He did, of course, it had been one of the main points in Gladius' report.

"Two months, maybe three," Law replied. Now that his Amber Lead Syndrome was no longer the focus of the conversation he had relaxed considerably.

"Ah, yes." Doflamingo looked Rayne right in the eyes. "Or maybe she could have longer. An entire life, even."

Rayne jerked back, as if he had been punched, and his mouth fell open. Doflamingo didn't wait for him to recover and withdrew a now very familiar box from one of the pockets of his coat, opened it and placed it on the table facing Rayne.

"This is the Ope Ope no Mi, a devil fruit with the power to heal virtually any illness or injury as long as its user has some medical knowledge. If you agree to my deal, I will allow you to heal your daughter first thing once you eat it."

Rayne was staring at the fruit, a mix of incredulity, hope and greed in his eyes.

"What do you want?" he asked finally in a breathless voice. "There is no way you'd give me something like this just to save the kid." He darted a quick, apologetic look at Law, but Law just shrugged indifferently.

"That's a good question," Doflamingo replied. "There is a very interesting technique that can be performed only with this devil fruit, its ultimate power. The Perennial Youth Operation. As you might imagine from the name, it's an operation to make a person immortal. Unfortunately, there is a certain… price to pay for that operation. It will cost the fruit user who performs it their life. So, here is the question: is saving your daughter's life worth sacrificing your own?"

* * *

"He's going to agree, you know," Doflamingo told Law later that night, once they had returned to the ship. Doflamingo had told Rayne that he had until noon the following day to decide, and that someone would drop by his house then for his answer.

"Yeah, I know," Law replied, staring at nothing in particular on the ceiling.

"Then why aren't you going to bed?" Doflamingo asked, and Law guessed he had a point. Everybody had already wandered off from the room, and Law found a certain amusement in thinking that if he closed his eyes he could hear Buffalo's monstrous snores even though Buffalo's room wasn't close enough for it. But Law couldn't go to bed. He had seen the look in Rayne's eyes when Doflamingo had laid out his proposal. Law had seen the look on Rayne's face before, on the citizens of Flevance whenever something that might lead to a cure was discovered. It had grown more and more in desperation as time had passed and the realization that there would be no cure had started to really sink in, because, unlike Law himself, most people weren't willing to just accept that they would die, and sought desperately for a way out. There had been a trace of that same look in the Sister's own eyes when she had told the children that the soldiers would spare their lives. As nonsensical as the notion had been given the situation and the way everybody was being exterminated by then, she had _needed_ to believe someone would be spared, and thus had believed the soldiers.

By the end of the meeting, Rayne had looked just like the Sister had the last time Law saw her alive.

That was the reason why Law couldn't go to bed yet, because he didn't want to be left alone with the thoughts that had resurfaced in his mind, much less the dreams that he knew would come if he managed to fall asleep.

But he couldn't tell Doflamingo that.

"I'm going to have a stranger use a devil fruit on me to try to heal what I've believed would kill me for over three years. You could say I'm too nervous to sleep," he responded instead, and immediately asked the first question that came to mind to divert the conversation. "What about you? Why aren't you in bed?"

Because Doflamingo was lounging in his armchair, a cup of wine in one hand, and didn't look to be in any hurry to move.

Doflamingo chuckled.

"You could say I'm nervous, too. I'm about to become immortal."

Law turned his head to stare at him, eyebrows up in his forehead.

"That's weird. I never thought anything would make you nervous."

They stayed silent for a while, Doflamingo lazily swirling the wine in his cup and taking a sip every now and then, thinking who knew what. Law was just sprawled on his back on the couch, too sore and too exhausted to move. His usual pastime when he had some free time or just didn't want to sleep, training, had not been an option for a few weeks now —even before the crew had been made aware of his condition by Law's unfortunate fainting— and that had the unwelcome effect of leaving Law to his thoughts.

Law didn't want to think.

"What will happen now?" he asked, breaking the silence before it could drag him somewhere he didn't want to go.

"Hm?"

"After the fruit, I mean. What's your aim? I never bothered to ask."

Doflamingo laughed, and there was a hint of incredulity to it.

"You've been with us for three years and you 'never bothered to ask'?" he repeated, and chuckled again.

Law would have sat up, indignant, but he had to resign himself to slowly pushing himself to his elbows and ignore the complaints of both his arms and torso.

"I thought I was dead, it was irrelevant," he protested. And he still did, mostly, but now he was reluctantly willing to admit that there might be a chance of him living past his life expectancy of thirteen years, and in that case he wanted to know more details of what were the long term aims of the Donquixote Pirates. Law knew there was some major plan at play; he had simply not cared enough to look deeper into it.

Once he had stopped chuckling —and sometimes Doflamingo's practically default reaction of laughing was _really_ annoying— Doflamingo placed his cup on the side table and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees.

"When you're healed, you'll resume your training, and eventually, when you're strong enough, you'll become the third Corazon."

This time Law couldn't control his reaction and moved up. He didn't manage to sit up, of course, and instead winced at the pain the movement sent through his body and was barely able to remain on his elbows.

"Me? You want me to be an executive?"

"Of course. I wasn't lying when I said I'd make you my right hand man. You have a lot of potential, and I intend to make sure you develop it."

Law wasn't exactly sure how to respond. Again, due to the certainty of his own death, Law hadn't given much thought to Doflamingo's words when he had accepted Law into the crew. He had never believed he would live long enough to reach that level of power. Now, however… While Law's opinion of three quarters of the executives —two thirds now that Corazon had defected— wasn't particularly high, he could easily acknowledge their strength and power. The thought of reaching that level himself was a thrilling one. If he could be as strong as an executive and have the power they did, it would help him take his revenge on the world. Law had sometimes fantasized about getting his hands on, just to put an example, the royal family of Flevance, who had escaped with the government's help before the situation had spiraled out of control. He wondered if that would ever be a real possibility.

"As for our long term plans," Doflamingo continued, "have you ever heard of a country called Dressrosa?"

 **To be continued**


	4. Chapter 4

I know I said I'd update weekly, but I'm going to be serious: I'm not invested in this story, like, at all, the only reason I'm posting it is because it's done, but this means that I… forget to update it, where as a general rule when I have chapters written ahead I'm incapable of waiting until the intended date before posting them. This means that, while I'll eventually get around to posting everything, it might take a while, because I never feel like revising the chapters. Sorry.

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

Senor Pink had left sometime before noon carrying a suitcase full of money with him, a sort of compensation for the family of the doctor who would both heal Law and make the Young Master immortal. His family would lose him and his income, and the Young Master had said there was no reason not to be generous with someone who would do so much for them, and they had lots of money to spare.

Baby 5 was excited.

Law was going to be okay soon, and they could go back to playing, training and going on missions together. And he wouldn't die, which was the best part. Baby 5 had grown to really like Law over the years, even if he sometimes became angry and glared at her with that expression that made her think he actually wanted to kill her. But he was nice more often than not, even if Law would deny it was true.

Not today, though.

Law was the worst insomniac Baby 5 had ever met, but he usually managed to catch a few hours of sleep. It was easy to tell when he hadn't because his mood soured. Today, Law was _cranky_ , the way he became when, under normal circumstances, he had spent two sleepless nights in a row, but Baby 5 guessed in his state one night would be more than enough to put him in that mood. He had snapped at Baby 5 to leave him alone during breakfast, and so she had.

Baby 5 was currently perched on one of the railings, trying to look over the rocks at the little village near which they had anchored and waiting for Senor Pink to come back.

She had been there for a little over half an hour when she spotted him approaching, accompanied by a man —who must be the doctor— carrying a little girl that didn't look very healthy in his arms, and a woman walking close to him. As they moved closer, Baby 5 realized they looked very nervous. And terrified.

They had no reason to be afraid. Sure, the doctor was going to die, but he had agreed to it and it would allow him to save his daughter. The Family wasn't going to hurt them, though. They would be safe while they were on board the ship.

Baby 5 called out to Senor Pink and waved, beckoning them closer. She jumped over the edge of the ship —the woman gasped and brought her hands up to cover her mouth— and landed on one of the most even patches of rock that made up this part of the coast. She ran up to the group and came to a halt next to the doctor.

"You're gonna save Law?" she asked, balancing on the balls of her feet.

The doctor, Baby 5 didn't remember his name, looked down at her, clear apprehension in his eyes —Baby 5 was good at identifying these kinds of emotions, she was very used to seeing all degrees of worry and fear on their enemies' faces.

"The boy?" he asked, and Baby 5 nodded. "Yes, that's… part of the deal," he replied, nearly trailing off halfway through the sentence. He looked to the woman, who Baby 5 guessed must be his wife, and they exchanged some sort of really charged look.

"Baby 5," Senor Pink called her, in that non-threatening voice he always used —and made him the nicest person in the Family— and Baby 5 nodded.

"Right." She skipped forward, waving at their guests. "Follow me, please."

She led them to the gangplank. The Family members rarely used it, mainly just to load some of the heavier treasure on board the ship, but they had brought it out figuring that their guests probably wouldn't be able to just jump to the deck.

* * *

Buffalo was bored. He had thought it would be interesting to see that doctor guy use the Ope Ope no Mi, but no, the Young Master had kicked most of the Family out of the main room, saying that the doctor needed as few distractions as possible. Right now, the only ones inside were the Young Master, Law, the doctor, his kind of hot wife and their little daughter. Jora had asked if it wouldn't be a good idea for at least one of the executives to stay, just in case, but the Young Master had said that _he_ was more than enough security. Which was true, of course. The doctor was terrified, and it was hard to say how much of that fear was because he would die and how much it was for being here, with them.

Unfortunately, being kicked out meant that they had to entertain themselves.

"What the hell are they doing in there? It's been four hours!" Buffalo complained.

"Don't be silly," Baby 5 admonished him. "He has to learn to use the fruit, and _afterwards_ has to discover how to heal first his daughter, then Law and finally make the Young Master immortal. You can't expect him to do that in an hour."

"It's been _four hours_ , not one," Buffalo insisted. By now, they were the only ones who remained hanging around the door, everybody else had left to do other things at one point or another.

"So?" Baby 5 asked, shrugging. "Let him take time if he needs it. You don't want the Young Master or Law to get hurt because he hurried up and didn't notice something, do you?"

Buffalo huffed. He doubted that the Young Master could be hurt by that doctor, no matter how much he messed up, and Law was crazy, stubborn and scarily tough, even if he was half dead at the moment. He didn't bother to voice these thoughts, and stood up instead.

"Whatever. I'm bored, I want an ice cream," he said, walking away.

"It's winter!" Baby 5 called after him, but he just shrugged. Some snow wasn't going to get between Buffalo and ice cream.

He wasn't surprised when Baby 5 followed him. He could get her to pay, he realized. Law had the right idea in asking Baby 5 for money, though Law only did it when he didn't have any cash himself.

They had been told they could go into the village as long as they didn't draw attention to the fact they were pirates. Something about a small port with a couple merchant ships anchored in it at the moment that would make people think they came from one of them.

* * *

The greatest disadvantage of the Ope Ope no Mi, water and seastone aside, was the fact that using it drained its user's stamina, limiting how much it could be used to how much stamina the user had. Rayne was very clearly on the weaker end of the scale, nothing surprising, and he had to stop his efforts not long after he had got an acceptable hang on the power for what they needed it.

Rayne had politely declined the invitation to eat with the Family, and had instead retreated with his family and some food for the night. As long as they didn't leave the ship or he attempted anything stupid, Doflamingo didn't care what they did. Aware that this would take a few days, Doflamingo had told Jora to prepare a spare room for Rayne and his family to occupy.

They were eating dinner now, and the Family was asking questions about how things had gone, how similar was the actual power of the Ope Ope no Mi to the information they had gathered on it over the years, how long did they expect the job to take… Not only Doflamingo was answering, but so was Law. Law had never been the most talkative of kids, and as his condition worsened he had been talking less and less. Law tried to save as much energy as possible when he wasn't being stubborn, and he seemed to think conversation was one of the most unnecessary activities he could save energy from. And yet, he was talking now, responding to the technical questions about their observation of the Ope Ope no Mi.

There had been an idea dancing on the back of Doflamingo's mind since they had received news on the fruit, but now that he saw Law's obvious interest in it the idea took force.

"Law," he said, interrupting Buffalo's question about if being inside the fruit's dome felt weird. Everybody quieted down and looked at Doflamingo.

"What?" Law asked through a mouthful of fish. The polite table manners of an upper class kid Law had exhibited upon joining the Family had been long since abandoned.

"What would you say to eating the Ope Ope no Mi?"

Someone choked and started to cough, Doflamingo wasn't sure who because he was focusing on Law's reaction. Law's eyes widened in surprise, and something that might be interest shone in them afterwards before he frowned.

"That depends. Are you planning on having me make someone immortal?"

Doflamingo chuckled, amused by Law's ability to consider bad scenarios and their likelihood even when there was virtual candy dangling before his eyes.

"Not at all. But having our doctor eat the Ope Ope no Mi would be really beneficial."

Law considered it for a couple of seconds —to him, that was enough to have in account a few dozen scenarios, he also resembled Doflamingo in that— before he nodded.

"Do devil fruits really taste as bad as they say?"

He shouldn't have asked that, because he was subsequently treated to a collection of gruesome stories of just how horrid the taste of a devil fruit truly was. Halfway through it, Law stopped his attempts to force food down his throat and pushed his plate away.

* * *

Law watched in fascination as Rayne worked on his daughter, Lin. Rayne had pulled her apart with as much ease as he would a puzzle, asking her after every action if he was hurting her or if anything felt uncomfortable. By now it had become abundantly clear that while Lin knew she was onboard a pirate ship and was accordingly terrified about it, she had no idea of the price Rayne would pay to save her life. She would reassure him that she was fine, giggling even at Rayne's concern from time to time, and had not even once shown the slightest indication of worry for him, nothing that hinted that she knew more than the vague explanation Law had overheard a couple of times: that Rayne was going to help the crew with something in exchange for using this power.

Law had scoffed the first time he had heard the words, but hadn't said anything about it. He was making a conscious effort not to pay any particular attention to Lin past the mesmerizing operation that was being performed on her. She was tiny, bright spirited, with brown hair she had been wearing in pigtails until the operation, and was about to have her world thrown upside down. She was eerily reminiscent of Lami before the Amber Lead started to visibly take over her body.

Pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, Law pulled on the mask over his mouth and nose. They were in a sterilized room past the infirmary, and Rayne had insisted that if Law and Doflamingo wanted to witness the operation, they would have to put on appropriate wear.

* * *

The operation had taken hours. Rayne, aware that he would not have a second chance to check Lin's condition, had taken a painstakingly long time in making sure he had done everything he could for Lin. By the time the operation was over he was barely able to stand on his own. His wife, who had been waiting the entire time in the hallway, helped him walk, Lin mock-supporting him on his other side, as they went to the guest room.

Baby 5 had been in the hallway, too, and she called after them promising that she would bring them dinner later.

Law could barely walk as well. He had exhausted himself after so many hours of attempting to concentrate on the operation with varying degrees of success. That didn't stop him from complaining when Doflamingo picked him up. Like on previous occasions, he was ignored.

The three of them started for the mess hall.

"It's so sad…" Baby 5 said after a few steps, and there really was sadness in her voice.

"What is sad?" Doflamingo asked her in that voice that suggested he was only giving her half an ear while he thought of something else.

"The doctor. He's just saved his daughter, but he'll die before they can spend any time together. And his daughter… I'd feel guilty if someone in the Family died because of me."

Law wasn't looking at her, but he could easily imagine Baby 5 had looked up with big, round eyes at Doflamingo right then. Doflamingo slowed down and bent for a moment, probably to pat her head or something like that.

"Life isn't fair, Baby 5. But who is more important, doctor Rayne or Law and me?"

"You, of course!" Baby 5 replied immediately.

Law didn't listen to the rest of the conversation, his mind stuck in Doflamingo's first words.

 _Life isn't fair._

Unbidden, a thought that Law had pushed away halfway through the operation came back. The government had known of Flevance's fate for a century in advance, and they had known of the Ope Ope no Mi's existence as well. Yet nobody had bothered to try to use it to help.

No, life certainly wasn't fair. That was the worst understatement Law had ever heard.

* * *

When the time for his operation finally came the following morning, Law couldn't find it in himself to feel nervous or apprehensive about it. If it worked he would live; if it didn't Law would just be left to the fate he had resigned himself to years ago.

He was the calmest one about it. Rayne and his wife were scared of the consequences if Rayne somehow messed it up. Baby 5 was moving around nervously, wringing her hands, and had spent breakfast asking Law constantly how he was holding up. There were jokes around the table, mostly at Law's expense, but there was also an undercurrent of unease to them; over the last three years, despite his impending death, Law _had_ become a part of the Donquixote Pirates, and he would go so far as to say some of them actually cared about his fate. Even Doflamingo was tense. It made sense, of course, because Doflamingo had a vested interest in Law and whether that interest would turn into something more or not would be decided today.

Law mostly ignored everyone, didn't eat breakfast himself as per Rayne's instructions and headed to their makeshift operating room with Doflamingo when it was time.

* * *

When Law woke up there was barely any light in the room. A look around proved that the curtain wasn't drawn over the window, it was simply night. Which was odd, because it had been late in the afternoon when the operation was completed, and Law had passed out right after forcing himself to eat something. He didn't feel as if he had slept just a few hours.

Then a dark shadow appeared over him and spoke in a bright, familiar voice.

"You're awake!"

Law had a sense of déjà-vu.

"Baby 5?" he asked.

Instead of a reply, there was the sound of hurried movement before the light overhead was turned on. Law immediately closed his eyes and covered them with a hand.

"Too bright!" he complained.

"Sorry," apologized Baby 5, but she didn't turn the light off. He heard her approach again.

"What time is it?" Law asked, removing his hand but keeping his eyes shut.

"I'm not sure of the hour, but dinner should be ready anytime now. You've slept for a day."

"Again?" he groaned. He cracked his eyes open, and a brown blur he knew to be his ceiling appeared.

Next to him, Baby 5 giggled.

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm…" Law started his standard reply of 'I'm fine', but cut himself halfway through. Because he _was_ fine, or close enough to it anyway. In comparison to how he had been feeling lately, he was great. He didn't feel like a giant nerve throbbing in pain anymore.

Law sat up abruptly, and regretted the movement immediately. He may not be in the same amount of pain he had been experiencing only yesterday morning, but he was still considerably sore. And _dizzy_. An entire day without food would have that effect, he supposed. It was when that thought crossed his mind that Law realized something very important: _he was hungry_. Law hadn't been hungry in what felt like forever. It was strangely comforting to realize his stomach was demanding food.

He realized Baby 5 was speaking and looked at her. He hadn't been listening, but it was easy enough to guess her words anyway.

"I'm fine," he completed this time, and ignored her dubious look. "Really. A little hungry."

Just as he had expected, that comment had her whole attention. Baby 5 moved back from the bed at once.

"Let's go get dinner, then!"

Nodding, Law shoved the covers off and climbed out of bed, stepping into the waiting slippers that he knew Baby 5 had placed there. He reached for the folded blanket on his bedside table, but stopped short of his fingers touching it.

He wasn't cold.

Leaving the blanket where it was, he followed Baby 5 out of the room.

Baby 5 chatted all the way to the mess hall, updating Law on everything he had missed. Very early this morning, Doflamingo had gone with Rayne and his family back to their house —a better option than leaving Rayne's lifeless body by the coast or carrying it across the village— and returned not too long afterwards with the newly formed Ope Ope no Mi in hand. They had set sail immediately and there had been an in and off party going on since then.

Everybody was present in the mess hall when they arrived, and all heads turned to look at Law.

"Look who's decided to join us!"

Greetings, questions of how he was doing and teasing comments overrode one another, and Law was left blinking, dumbfounded, at the crew. It was one thing to know some of these people cared, but it didn't make it any less odd to see a show of it. And aimed at him no less, when Law had made no real effort of integrating himself in the crew in the first place, convinced as he had been that he would die. It was easy to forget sometimes how the Donquixote Pirates were a family of choice of sorts.

Unsure of how to respond, Law looked around the room and spotted Doflamingo sitting at his place at the table.

"You don't look different," Law blurted out. There was a muttered comment that sounded like 'rude little shit' from Trebol, which was really a very normal reaction for him. The tension Law hadn't noticed in his shoulders lessened.

"Neither do you," replied Doflamingo, looking him up and down. "Will those spots disappear?"

Law shrugged.

"No idea. It's not like anybody has ever recovered from this before."

* * *

Dinner passed in a mostly normal fashion. The only hint that suggested something of relevance had happened was the boisterous cheer around the table, louder than usual. Law made the mistake of admitting he was hungry, and had to eventually threaten Jora so that she would stop pushing food at him. He may be hungry, but that didn't change the fact that he had spent a long time eating very little food. Law's definition of hunger was very different from Jora's. In fact, Law doubted that he would ever have been able to eat as much as Jora wanted him to, even at his healthiest moments.

After dinner, Law asked about the Ope Ope no Mi.

"I'll give it to you in a few days, when you've recovered a little," Doflamingo told him.

Law opened his mouth to protest, then remembered the fruit spent the user's stamina and closed his mouth. He wouldn't be able to use it until he had recovered somewhat.

"Besides," Macvise said, "you'll want to eat it _before_ a meal, to get the taste off your mouth."

* * *

A week passed before Doflamingo placed the Ope Ope no Mi on Law's still empty breakfast plate.

Law looked down at the weird fruit, trying to prepare himself psychologically to swallow it no matter how horrible the taste was. Ignoring the stares fixed on him —every conversation had stopped the moment Doflamingo had put the fruit before Law— he took the fruit in both hands and bit into it.

Law's first instinct was to spit it out, but he forced himself to swallow, dropped the remaining fruit on his plate and grabbed the nearest bottle —thankfully milk and not something weird. He drank from the bottle in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to chase the taste away. There were chuckles around the table, and even some outright laughter.

"Law," Diamante started in a singsong voice Law knew never meant anything good. "You're not done. You have to eat it all."

Law glared at him over the edge of the bottle and stopped drinking to speak.

"I know that's not true. You get the power with the first bite."

Diamante frowned at him, and Law flashed him a quick smirk before reaching out for some real food.

 **To be continued**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

The Donquixote Pirates had settled down in their new base and resumed their normal routine. They were more cautious than usual, because they didn't know exactly how much information Corazon had given the marines about their activities and associates, and they didn't know when they could run into marines or other government agents. Doflamingo wasn't particularly worried, and neither were the remaining executives, but the rest of the crew were. Law wondered what those four knew that made them doubt the government would interfere in their operations, but he didn't give it much thought.

Law, for the most part, was too busy going through all the information the crew had gathered about the Ope Ope no Mi over the years, as well as trying to get back into his training routine. He couldn't resume the same intensity of exercising he had been doing before his illness started to really interfere with his daily life, but he did make a point of pushing himself a little further every day. He was also working on getting a hang on his new powers, which soon resulted in him carrying a sword wherever he went to be able to practice whenever he wanted.

Maintaining the power's dome — _Room_ he called it— used up more energy and concentration than he had originally expected, but it became slowly less taxing the more he used the power. Cutting things didn't really take up effort, probably because it was the blade doing the job in the first place. Moving things, however, was complicated, more so the larger an object was. Distance still didn't account in how exhausting the exercise was, but that was due to the fact that the _Room_ Law could create was still too small for distance to be an issue.

Upon assimilating the knowledge that he would really, truly live, Law had taken up a couple new habits. One of them was browsing through bookstores when they visited a new town in search of any interesting or useful medical texts to add to his growing collection. Up until his operation all the books he owned had been bought by Doflamingo, and while Law had poured through them eagerly, he had never gone out of his way to buy any books.

His second new habit was sunbathing.

After being so sickly pale for so long, Law wanted to have color on his skin. There had been some laughter when the crew discovered it, because winter in North Blue wasn't an ideal choice for sunbathing, but it was the only choice available and Law wasn't going to pass on it. He had already started to gain some color and, much to his satisfaction, the white spots on his skin _had_ started to vanish. Slowly and gradually, but they had. He had no real explanation for it, similar marks created by other diseases didn't usually disappear, but he guessed it had to do with the same miraculous properties that had healed him in the first place. If the Ope Ope no Mi could heal a disease that was supposed to be deadly, why couldn't that same operation have the aftereffect of erasing marks that should have been there for life? There was a saying about gift horses and mouths that Law was going to stick to in this case.

* * *

Law walked into the main room, a bag with two medical journals in hand, and stopped. There were two unknown girls standing in the middle of the room dressed in shabby, frayed clothes. They had both green hair, and clearly appeared to be sisters: one of them was older than Law, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, and the other didn't look to be even ten years old. Their eyes made it clear that they were the type of people who hadn't had much of a chance to be children.

"Oh, Law, you're just in time," Doflamingo said, and it was just then that Law realized he was sitting on his armchair. Law mentally berated himself. Doflamingo may not be an enemy, but Law still was an idiot for lowering his guard so much he hadn't noticed his presence. Being at headquarters didn't necessarily mean safety, after all, the marines or some suicidal and brave crew could show up any time.

"In time for what?" he asked, covering his thoughts.

"These are Monet and Sugar," Doflamingo introduced, gesturing first to the older girl and then to the younger one, "they will be joining our Family from now on."

"Just like that?" Law burst out, belatedly realizing that Doflamingo wasn't done speaking. Pretending he hadn't noticed —Doflamingo wasn't too likely to get pissed at him for it, after all— Law elaborated. "You took a week before accepting me into the Family."

Doflamingo chuckled.

"I had to make sure you could survive Corazon." His grin tightened in a way that Law had long since learned to recognize as anger. Anger that wasn't directed at anyone present. "But he's no longer here."

"You could always set someone else on them."

Doflamingo laughed, and relaxed back into his seat.

"No need. If they can't handle piracy, we'll see eventually. Girls, this is Law, our doctor."

Monet's eyebrows went up in slight surprise.

"Doctor?" she asked, and looked at him curiously.

Law crossed his arms, bag still dangling from his left hand, and readied himself for a jab at his age.

"Yes, doctor. Got a problem with that?" he snapped.

"No. I'm just surprised," she replied, mild-mannered and a little amused.

Law relaxed when he saw that there was no hostility or mockery in her demeanor and turned to Doflamingo.

"You wanted me to do something?"

"Can you gather the rest? We should do some introductions."

Law nodded, turned around and left. It wasn't until he had dropped off the bag in his room that he realized Monet and Sugar were the first people to truly join the crew since Law himself arrived three years ago. Many people had come and tried, but no one had been capable of dealing with Corazon's viciousness. In light of his betrayal, Law wondered if Corazon's behavior had been a stratagem to prevent the crew from gaining too many members.

The more he guessed about him, the more Law realized Corazon wasn't even half the idiot they all had thought him to be.

* * *

Law wasn't really surprised when Monet and Sugar proved to be capable of handling this life. Over the past few years, Law had learned to read people much better than he had been able to as a kid, and it was easy to tell Monet and Sugar were tough. It was soon proven that they weren't just tough, they were _ruthless_. Monet didn't bat an eye when, on a mission with Law, Macvise and Trebol, the organization they had tried to make a deal with decided they didn't like the terms of the agreement and attacked them, being massacred as a result. Sugar didn't go on active missions —she had even less fighting knowledge than Law had possessed when he joined, and needed some training before she would be of use— but she was unfazed by the many gory stories she heard from the crew.

Baby 5 took an immediate liking to them, and took it upon herself to drag them all across town and buy them new clothes and other things they might need. Law excused himself with an impromptu practice session with his devil fruit to avoid that particular trip and set Buffalo to accompany them in the same sentence, something he considered a master move on his part. Buffalo swore revenge, but an ice cream took care of his anger as easily as it had bought his silence three years ago when Law had stabbed Corazon. A part of Law suspected that if Doflamingo were to hear about that particular incident now, he would simply regret Law's attempt had failed. The other part didn't want to know, because Corazon's betrayal didn't change the fact that Law _had_ attempted to kill an executive, in cold blood and fully aware of the consequences.

* * *

"Oh, hey, what's with the clothes?" Diamante asked, leaning down to have a better look at Senor Pink.

Doflamingo looked at Pink closely as well, and realized that, while he was wearing a suit as always, it appeared somehow to have been pressed more carefully, no ruffles in sight, and his hair was styled in more detail than usual.

"I have a date," Pink replied, and there was noticeable excitement in his voice.

"Oh? Who's the lucky girl?" Diamante asked.

"Her name is Russian. We… met the other day," Pink looked slightly embarrassed, but decidedly pleased, when he replied.

"Does she know you're a pirate?" Lao G asked from the table, and Pink very nearly snorted.

"Don't be stupid. That's not something I can just say in the first date. She would leave running."

Listening to the conversation around, Doflamingo realized that he had never entertained the idea that a member of his Family would ever even consider taking steps to form a family of their own. Thinking about it now, though, Doflamingo concluded that he didn't really mind. As long as this woman didn't interfere with Pink's work and position in the Family there was no reason to be against it. If the relationship turned out to be serious, she could even join the Family if she wanted to and proved she could handle their life.

* * *

They eventually ran into the marines. Half the crew, Doflamingo himself in charge, had left on the ship to do a few business in a fortunately far off area of North Blue, meaning the marines would have no way to locate their headquarters based on this encounter.

Provided anyone survived.

By now Law had already had a few chances to try his powers in a fight, and had some useful moves under his belt. His _Room_ now could cover a fifteen feet radius, nowhere near enough to hurt distant enemies or apply the fancier techniques he had come up with, but sufficient to provide a very good defense. No enemy could approach him for a short range attack without being immediately sliced into pieces, and Law now could switch bullets to deflect them as long as he knew they had been fired.

At one point during the battle, when he was surrounded by a group of marines who were doing their best to stay out of Law's _Room_ , he switched himself with a cannonball that passed through the edge of his _Room_ , aimed who-knew-where, and rolled away right before it exploded amidst the confused marines.

It wasn't until the battle was over —Law had just chopped up six marines into bite-sized pieces— the marine ship littered with dead and injured bodies, that Law realized a very important detail: none of his crewmates had assisted him at any point.

Looking around, he could easily spot them. They were the only people left standing, or, in Doflamingo's case, lounging on a higher area of deck overlooking where Law stood. And all of them were done fighting.

"What the…? Thanks for the help!" Law yelled at them, marching to where Trebol stood with Buffalo and Monet. They had been clearly looking, too.

"Sorry, Law," Doflamingo said unapologetically, chuckling. He jumped down to join them. "That power is just too amusing to watch."

"It's fascinating. You could do so many things with it…" Monet agreed.

"Any particular ideas?" Law asked her. Monet had proven herself to be smart and resourceful, and that was something Law respected in people.

"Could you reattach limbs to a body? Or give them entirely new ones?"

"Theoretically, yes. I haven't tried it, though."

Monet hummed, and by the dreamy look on her face Law guessed she was thinking of something specific. He wasn't curious enough to ask.

* * *

Sengoku raised his head from the dreadfully dull supplies report he had been reading over as part of the less glamorous side of the Fleet Admiral's job, and thanked the heavens for the interruption. Not even a moment after he had paused, the door opened and Rosinante walked in.

Rosinante was still adapting to life in Marineford. While adopting the functions of a marine commander, his former rank before his mission with the Donquixote Pirates, by itself hadn't supposed much trouble, the marines themselves were a different story. The Donquixote Pirates were a widely known crew, and in his role as a cover agent Rosinante had even gained a bounty for himself. That bounty had been retracted the moment he blew his cover, of course, but there was still the occasional uninformed marine who mistook him for a criminal —those guys were subjected to a very thorough talking to for being so stupid as to think a wanted criminal could just wander happily through Marine Headquarters. Those instances were annoying but, generally, easily solved. The main problem Rosinante encountered, and which had landed more than one mouthy soldier in the infirmary, was when someone doubted his integrity as a marine because of his stint as a pirate.

Rosinante had been admonished more times than Sengoku cared to count because of this. But that wasn't the reason he was there.

"Did you see the report?" Sengoku asked. Upon his arrival, Rosinante had requested to be sent copies of the reports concerning the Donquixote Pirates, and nobody had seen any reason to oppose it. This same morning, a report had arrived after a few solid months of silence and vague clues that hadn't led them anywhere. Doflamingo had attacked a marine ship and killed most of the crew.

"I did." Rosinante sat on the couch, and Sengoku threw him a package of rice crackers. As per one of the rules they had set over the years, Rosinante didn't smoke when he came into Sengoku's office.

"Do you know who the girl is?" Sengoku asked him. There were no pictures, but they had received a general description of the members of the Donquixote Pirates who had attacked the ship. They had been able to identify all of them except for a girl of about nineteen that hadn't been in any of Rosinante's reports.

Rosinante shook his head.

"She must have joined after I left." He ripped the bag open and pulled a cracker out. "At least she's an adult," he muttered through the first bite.

"We haven't identified her, the description we received is too vague." Because the words green hair, creepy and pretty hot could apply to a considerably large number of women, and Doflamingo had a special skill for recruiting people from the seedier areas of a town, where information was scarce at best and not asking questions about others was one of the main rules.

"I'm not here for her."

Sengoku sighed.

"No, I'd figured. You're here for the kid." The report had included information on a boy of about maybe twelve —older, in truth, but Sengoku had already known he didn't look his age— with slightly discolored skin, a spotted hat and a creepy power. "It looks like he ate the Ope Ope no Mi."

"It makes sense," Rosinante said with a shrug. "Law's the best option Doffy has for that power."

"You want to ask something, don't you?" Sengoku sighed, though he already knew the response. Rosinante was too much of a bleeding heart for his own good and, despite his claims during their many conversations while he had been undercover, Sengoku knew he had felt sorry for the kid.

"Don't put a bounty on his head. I know Doffy has plans for Law, he probably wants to make him the next Corazon now that I'm gone, but Law… He's not dying anymore, and I'm hoping he'll stop and reconsider things now that he has a whole life ahead."

"Didn't you say he was too much like Doflamingo?" Sengoku pointed out. Those had been basically Rosinante's first words about that kid, after all.

"Yes and… no?" Rosinante replied with a helpless shrug.

"That makes sense," Sengoku said drily, and Rosinante smiled sheepishly.

"Let me explain, will you? It's kinda complicated." Sengoku waved for him to go ahead. "Okay. Law is angry at the world, that's the first thing I saw about him, and the hatred he showed… it reminded me a lot of Doffy. But I've had years to watch him, and while the anger and hatred _are_ still there, he's not cruel. Not really, whatever he tries to say about it. Law doesn't enjoy causing pain the way Doffy does, he's not amused by others' suffering. I don't think he could turn on someone he claims to love and…" here Rosinante hesitated and turned his head away. "And kill them in cold blood for a perceived betrayal." Donquixote Homing's death was an old wound, but one they both knew would never heal. Rosinante swallowed and looked back at Sengoku. "Law hates the world because it took away the people he loved, not because it took away a comfortable life or the privileges he thought should have been his, like Doffy does. The only common part in their hatred is that the world hurt them, but…"

Rosinante didn't say any more, but he didn't need to. While part of Doflamingo's hatred stemmed from the hurt itself and the way he had suffered at the hands of people for being a former Tenryuubito, most of it centered around the fact that he saw himself so above the average human being that he couldn't fathom they had dared turn against him, the same way he hated the Tenryuubito for turning their backs on him and attempting to kill him.

But that wasn't the point here.

"You hope that Law, now that he's not about to die, will realize he has to deal with the consequences of his actions and change his mind?"

Rosinante nodded.

"I don't think it'll be easy or fast, that brat can be a stubborn little shit, but if I'm right and he's not as similar to Doffy as I first thought he could come around and leave the Donquixote Pirates."

Sengoku sighed and leaned back in his chair.

"Alright, we'll do this: as long as the kid doesn't do anything too serious to ignore, we won't put a bounty on his head. But only for so long. If he is still with the Donquixote Pirates in…" he looked at Rosinante. "Exactly _how_ stubborn do you say he is?"

Rosinante smiled in amusement.

"Imagine Vice Admiral Garp. Or similar."

Sengoku nearly groaned. Of course, he should have imagined Rosinante's request wouldn't be easy. An average angry kid? He'd probably figure out he had messed up and turn tail in a few months at most. _Garp_?

"I'm giving you two years. If he's with them after that, he'll get a bounty on his head the next time he does something."

"Thank you."

 **To be continued**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Law groaned and turned around in bed again, the pillow firmly covering his head. The party had been going on for _hours_. Law had stayed for a while, had even enjoyed himself at first, but there was only so much time he could stand boisterous drunkards doing increasingly stupid and embarrassing antics. Law had quit the party the moment the lewd jokes moved from jokes to actual groping between people that felt no real attraction to one another while sober.

The problem was their base wasn't large enough, and the ruckus downstairs reached Law's room clearly.

Today, Senor Pink had married.

The crew hadn't attended the wedding because Pink still hadn't found the courage to tell Russian, his now wife, that he was a pirate —it had turned out she hated pirates, and Pink had lied about his job to her and was still doing it— and Pink wasn't here because he was at his house with Russian, but that hadn't deterred the crew from throwing a party. Any excuse was good for getting drunk, after all.

Doflamingo _had_ told Pink that he should tell Russian the truth, but Law doubted he would. Pink was far too smitten with her to risk losing her, and had been putting that conversation off for months.

Law didn't think this would end well, no matter how much Baby 5 liked to go on about how romantic the whole affair was.

* * *

Law hadn't cared much about his birthdays in the last few years. No, that wasn't exactly true. Law _had_ cared, even if he had done so in an entirely different way to how most people his age looked at their birthdays.

The first time that had happened had been on his tenth birthday. By then, Amber Lead Syndrome had appeared all over Flevance, and the doctors had already figured out it wasn't a sickness that spread through the population, nor something that could be treated by already existing medicaments. Despite the situation, his parents had managed to get away from work that day to celebrate his birthday, and Law had put up his best effort to appear happy and like he didn't have a care in the world. For his parents' sake, who back then still hadn't known Law was aware of what was going on, and for Lami, who had been truly unaware of what was going on. Two weeks after his birthday, Flevance had been quarantined by the other countries, and a month after his birthday Lami fell sick.

His eleventh birthday Law had managed to ignore. No one had known of it other than him, and if he had thrown himself into training with even more zeal than usual that day nobody had commented on it.

A few months prior to his twelfth birthday, Baby 5 had managed to extract the date out of him through sheer insistence and stubbornness, and she had attempted to celebrate it. Law had stormed out of the base.

Finally, last year Law had vanished the night before his birthday and hadn't returned until the day after it. Nobody had said a word.

His thirteenth birthday had been supposed to be his last one, yet here he was, about to celebrate his fourteenth.

 _Law was fourteen_.

For the first time in years, Law had actually agreed to a birthday party.

" _Brother, hurry up! I want cake!"_

Law jerked back at the unexpected memory, and stared at his shocked face in the mirror.

Lami had always relished any chance to indulge in sweets, and she had always thought Law hadn't been fast or enthusiastic enough whenever sweets had been involved. Law had been annoyed by that side of Lami, but now he missed even her most nagging comments.

Law shook his head, refusing to dwell in the past, and brusquely turned his back on the mirror.

He had a birthday party to attend. His _fourteenth_.

* * *

Bellamy had been reading about the Donquixote Pirates for years now. The entire world had, the Donquixote Pirates were one of those crews who made it into the cover pages of the newspaper often nowadays, but most people read about them with a mix of fear, disgust and apprehension. Not Bellamy. Bellamy wanted to become a pirate, both he and his friends did, and they saw the Donquixote Pirates as their ideal pirate crew. Donquixote Doflamingo was Bellamy's hero, the sort of man he wished he could be at some point but knew he would never be able to become.

That was why, once Bellamy and his group —his future crew— had decided to finally leave their boring, peaceful town, they had set out to try to locate the Donquixote Pirates. Even now, Bellamy wasn't sure _why_ they had done it, he wasn't naïve enough to believe any of them were strong enough to become a part of such a formidable crew, but if he had to guess he would say he probably had just wanted for Doflamingo to at least know Bellamy and his friends existed.

The last thing Bellamy had expected was for Doflamingo to allow them to use his symbol, and yet that was exactly what had happened.

Locating the Donquixote Pirates' hideout had been no easy task, and they had found the place more by luck than anything else —the crew was careful, and Bellamy had long since learned that they made a point not to do business in whatever island they resided at, which had basically left Bellamy with only the option to check islands where no article had come out about the Donquixote Pirates recently. In other words, it had taken months before luck had struck and they had heard word of their presence at an island.

Once there, Bellamy and his group had walked right into the base before they could lose their nerve. Bellamy had been reasonably sure they wouldn't be killed on sight, anyway. It was no secret in North Blue that many people just went up to the Donquixote Pirates to join them, even if practically everybody fled after just a few days.

They hadn't encountered anybody inside until they had reached what appeared to be an office, and inside was none other than Donquixote Doflamingo himself. There had been a kid with him, too, a boy that couldn't be older than thirteen with weird skin that was slightly discolored at some areas. Bellamy had caught some of his friends giving the kid odd looks and had directed them a quick glare. However young or weird the kid appeared, he was casually sitting with _Doflamingo_ , which meant he was most certainly a member of the Donquixote Pirates, and that alone earned him respect. Then Doflamingo had asked what they were doing there and Bellamy had started to speak.

And now, not even an hour later, Bellamy and his group were walking the streets of the seedier area of an otherwise perfectly normal and boring town. Bellamy clutched a paper in his hand, the Donquixote Pirates' symbol drawn proudly on it, and tried to contain his excitement.

"Are we setting sail, then?" Sarkiss asked next to him.

Bellamy stopped and turned to face the rest.

"No, not yet. We're not strong enough," he explained, before anybody could complain, and raised the paper to show it to them. "We have to make justice to this symbol, to be able to uphold it, and we are not strong enough for that. So we'll travel North Blue and train, and in a few years we'll set sail as pirates."

And, eventually, Bellamy hoped they would be strong enough to become members of the Donquixote Pirates.

* * *

"Why did you lend them the symbol?" Law asked. He was sitting on a huge armchair that dwarfed his still too short body, a notebook full of newspaper clippings and annotations in his lap. It was part of his studies: Law would eventually become an executive of the Family, and as such he needed to improve his general knowledge of the world. Not only was it necessary for their business, but Dressrosa wasn't going to rule itself.

Doflamingo shrugged.

"They looked like they really wanted it."

That response, predictably, drew a scoff from Law.

"They looked like weaklings. I bet I could've beaten them all on my own."

Doflamingo chuckled and leaned back on his chair.

"That too," he agreed, "but you never know when a bunch of devoted weaklings could come in handy."

Doflamingo had no intention of accepting weaklings in his crew for some time —for all that he had been a traitor, Rosinante had had the right idea in driving them away— but he knew they would have some use once the Family had control over Dressrosa, and he planned to start accepting them into the Family again when that happened. Not those kids, though, at least not in a long time. Those kids had looked at him like he was the best thing in the world —which he _was_ , but that was beside the point— but unfortunately they had lacked the potential that had shone in Law's maddened eyes, or even in the desperate gazes of Monet and Sugar when Doflamingo had… liberated them from their less than ideal situation. Still, they could prove useful, and Doflamingo liked to keep his options open, just in case.

* * *

The Donquixote Pirates had a fixation with devil fruit powers. That was something Law had known from the beginning. In fact, sometimes it was as if they believed by default that anybody who hadn't eaten a devil fruit was weak unless they were presented with proof to the contrary. At first, until he had proven himself capable and quick to learn, Law had been subjected a fair amount of comments and jokes because he didn't have an ability.

Law knew said obsession was the main reason this mission had come to be.

Around a week ago they had caught news of the presence of _three_ devil fruits in a relatively nearby marine base, no doubt intended for some big shot officers, and they had immediately started preparations to steal them. After all, both Monet and Sugar had shown an interest in becoming devil fruit users if those fruits' powers proved to be interesting.

The members of the party had been chosen carefully. Doflamingo, of course, led it. Diamante's power often proved useful in missions that required stealth, and so did Law's. Nobody else had come precisely because they were attempting to be stealthy —despite Doflamingo and Diamante's heights and their choices in wardrobe— but the ship was waiting a short distance away, just in case.

Infiltrating the marine base without being caught turned out to be ridiculously easy. Law mostly stayed back while Doflamingo and Diamante took care of any soldiers unfortunate enough to come across them, defeated a few soldiers himself and they stole the necessary keys to reach their objective. They didn't find the keys to the safe holding the fruits, but it wasn't even necessary to destroy it: Law simply switched the fruits with a bunch of empty candy wrappers he had in a pocket.

By the time someone raised the alarm they were already out of the base and had called for the ship to pick them up.

* * *

Law avoided the tedious task of pouring through their assorted collection of devil fruit guides in an attempt to identify their newly acquired fruits, and just waited for the others to do the job.

As it turned out, they were incredibly lucky. One of the devil fruits was a snow logia that would prove a great asset to whoever ate it. In this case, that was Monet, who perked up when that fruit was identified. Sugar also chose to eat one of the fruits, with a power that Law found pretty creepy: she could turn anyone she touched into a toy, and that person would be erased from everybody's memories. The book that described the fruit also hinted at the possibility that the user could have control over the toys as well. And Sugar would stop aging, something she didn't seem to mind.

The third fruit wasn't nearly as interesting, and there was a considerable amount of laughter when it was identified as a soap paramecia power. Diamante suggested Lao G —the only remaining non-devil fruit user in the crew if one didn't count four year old Dellinger— should eat it, which predictably didn't turn out well. That eventually turned into jokes about a marine officer using it, but the jokes died up quickly when Doflamingo reminded them that _Tsuru_ had a power similar to that one. They looked at the fruit with considerably more respect after that.

They decided to sell the third devil fruit.

* * *

It wasn't uncommon for pirate crews of all four Blues to head to the Grand Line unprepared. Truthfully, that was one of the main reasons why the Grand Line was known as the graveyard of pirates around the four Blues. Many ships sank before they even reached the Grand Line because, unaware of the workings of the Reverse Mountain, headed there without the knowledge that they had to be extremely careful of the strong currents leading to the entrance and crashed against the Red Line. Of the ships that did manage to cross that first obstacle, a considerable number fell prey to the Grand Line's unpredictable weather, which was even more hectic at the area immediately after the Twin Capes than anywhere else in Paradise, or they lost to other pirate crews. There were, too, those who grew desperate enough by the situation they found themselves in to try to flee through the Calm Belt. All in all, maybe a tenth of the pirate crews that entered the Grand Line managed to sail past the first two islands they encountered, and of those crews only a handful chose to try to advance forward. Even less of them reached Sabaody Archipelago.

The process repeated itself all over again, fiercer and much more dangerous, when it came to reaching the New World.

Doflamingo wasn't particularly worried about the trip through the Grand Line itself, he had gathered as much information as it was possible through his vast network of contacts. It had been years since most of the Family members had been strong enough to take on the challenges posed at Paradise —except, perhaps, if they were to run into a particularly strong individual, but Doflamingo was confident he could go toe to toe against most of the strongest marines by now. Paradise, however, was not their objective. Years ago, Doflamingo had decided they wouldn't cross Reverse Mountain until they were strong enough to sail the New World, because once they entered the Grand Line, the plan to take over Dressrosa would formally begin.

It was a matter of a few months now.

They were already tracing their route through Paradise, carefully selecting the one that would potentially prove to be most beneficial for their business, based on the contacts and associates they already had scattered through the Grand Line as well as the people and organizations of interest that could become new associates in the future.

There were also a number matters to settle on North Blue before they left. Contracts with a few dealers of materials that would be needed for the future factories at Dressrosa, modifications to a couple of standing arrangements… and the matter of Pink's wife, Russian.

Doflamingo frowned at the thought.

Pink had been married for months now, long enough that Russian was on her seventh month of pregnancy, and yet he still hadn't told her the truth about being a pirate. Pink had been putting it off since before the wedding —he had originally planned to tell her after he proposed— and time was running out. The last time Doflamingo had brought the subject up Pink had assured him he would tell her after she recovered from childbirth, because he didn't want anything to happen to Russian or the baby due to the shock. Which did make sense, but it would never have happened if he had manned up long ago and confessed the truth.

Doflamingo had been very clear about the situation: they wouldn't delay their departure because Pink hadn't gathered the courage to tell her, they would be leaving for Reverse Mountain in six months time unless something major happened. Whether Pink's family came along or not was up to him and the result of that conversation. Pink could always decide to stay behind, of course, but there had been no need to mention the price of betraying the Donquixote Family.

 **To be continued**


	7. Chapter 7

Lately, the bad emotions I associated with this story have diminished somewhat, which means I'm recovering some of the enthusiasm I originally felt when I started working on this fic.

Originally, this fic was finished at 25 chapters, but it is in need of revision (especially the final arc, which I wrote hurriedly and in a very bad mood), so that final count might change. I don't want to overwhelm myself again, and I have ongoing fics and some unpublished projects to work on, so I'll keep the updates monthly. The next one will be on September 30th.

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

The most tedious part of sorting through the loot of the enemies they defeated was going through their weapons. Gold? That was the best, it usually involved a lot of fawning over the best pieces, silly antics with the weirder ones and impromptu tests to estimate the value of any random piece —at first, for all that he had grown up as a privileged child, Law had been incapable of so much as guessing decently the price of even a simple ring, or identifying the material it was made of and the jewels embedded into it, but by now he had become adept enough at valuing most treasure, as long as nothing too outlandish appeared. Money? The easiest, they only had to count it and stack it neatly, the way Baby 5 had shown him the first time Law had helped her with it.

Weapons were a pain. They usually didn't keep them, and instead took them to sell to whichever organization, militia or even government wanted them. That meant every single weapon had to be examined and tested to be sure they were in good condition and worked properly before they could be sold.

Pica had returned from a mission loaded in treasure, money and enough weapons that it had taken him five trips to carry all of them from the ship to the room in their headquarters that they used for testing, and the weapons —stuffed in large boxes and sacs- occupied the corner farthest from the shooting targets.

When they distributed the tasks to go through the loot amongst the people that didn't have any missions coming up, Law drew the shortest stick, which landed him on weapon testing duty.

This was the second day he was working on it, and he wouldn't be surprised if he spent three or four more days doing it.

He placed one more gun in the working guns pile and walked up to the target. It was riddled with holes to the point of being useless for any more shooting, and it so happened to be the last target left. That meant Law would have to go get more, but he didn't feel like it right then. Throwing the target into the trash, Law decided to work on the considerable amount of blades for a while. He liked swords better, anyway.

Most of them were sharp, proof that these weapons were used frequently instead of locked in some room to rust —they had once come across a considerable stash of swords that had been mostly rusted and useless— but they were pretty average as far as their make was concerned. Good enough for soldiers or grunts. The first box he opened today contained exclusively short swords. Law didn't favor those, because even if had used them on occasion he had mostly learned to fight with longer swords, and with the exception of two broken ones they were fine, so Law threw those two out and pushed the entire box next to the pile of working guns after a cursory check that didn't take nearly as long as the guns had.

He opened a second box, a considerably larger one that was wider than Law was tall, and blinked. No pile of badly arranged blades was in it. Instead, it had been filled with cases of all sizes, half of them thin enough that they couldn't contain more than one weapon each. Realizing this meant these weapons were probably more expensive than the others he had gone through, Law decided to be more careful with them. The first rule he had been taught after the one about making sure that all the weapons worked was that a fancy weapon could fetch a price higher than the one it would deserve based on its quality. It wasn't uncommon that rich people wanted to display weaponry as a sign of power, and they often did not care about how well —if at all— the weapon worked, as long as it looked elegant and expensive.

A good example of this was the first case Law opened. It contained a set of twelve throwing knives. Beautiful, polished to the point of shining even with the relatively dull light in the room and absolutely impractical. The handles were inlaid with rubies, which would make it awkward at best to use them, and they were poorly balanced. Yet, Law knew this set would gain them more money than the entire box of serviceable short blades.

The next case contained a fancy yet good enough double-edged sword, followed then by a _shield_ that would work better as a mirror, a gun made of gold — _seriously_ — and another set of ridiculous throwing knives.

By the time Law put the second set of knives aside —emeralds this time, and clearly made for the same person as the first one— he was seriously tired of useless weapons that were no more than a waste of money.

He reached for another case, a small one that he would bet contained a knife or a dagger, maybe even a pretend ceremonial one, but stopped before lifting it, his hand holding the box halfway off the one beneath it.

There was… something. He would almost say someone, except that it didn't feel quite right to use that term. He didn't know what it was, it didn't make sense to even think there _was_ something at all. He hadn't heard any noise other than the ones he had made, he didn't feel the niggling sensation of having someone's eyes on him. He just knew whatever it was, it wasn't behind or around him. Whatever it was, however, it felt _off_.

He pulled the small case out, and the moment he raised his hand the sensation faded to the point that the only reason Law felt it at all was because he already knew it was there.

He put the case aside without bothering to open it and reached into the larger box again. As soon as he touched the surface where the small case had been resting the sensation came back. Whatever it was, it came from there. Or from under it.

There were smaller cases placed on top of it, but Law didn't care. He simply took them out and placed them next to the first one he had discarded. He would sort through them later.

He finally uncovered the case and took it out. It was long, taller than Law if placed upright, and it was wider than his palm. He had to walk away a few paces to have enough space to place it on the floor and then opened it. Inside, resting on shiny white padding, there were two objects: a long sword and what was clearly its scabbard. The sword, a nodachi, was longer than the average blade of its class, the grip was purple and it had white fur around the hand guard. The scabbard, black and with a line of thick white crosses running from end to end, had a red cord wrapped around a portion of the upper end, both ends of the cord hanging some ten inches from the knot.

Just looking at it, Law knew it was this sword that gave him the odd sensation.

Law reached in, wrapped his hand around the grip and lifted the nodachi from its place. Once he held it, he realized it was longer than he had realized at first. In fact, more out of curiosity than anything else, Law turned it so the tip of the blade rested against the floor, raised the arm holding the grip so the nodachi would be perpendicular to the floor and looked it up and down. If he wasn't mistaken, it was about Law's current height.

Law had tested a few of these weapons before, enough to realize through his cursory examination that this nodachi wasn't just adequate, it was better than the average blade that could be usually found, something he could tell despite the awkwardness of handling a weapon that was over twice the length he was used to. Curious about this, Law decided to check if there was any information in the case that he had missed.

He put the sword back in place and searched first for any kind of paper inside the case, but there was none. He closed the lid and stuck there, in a faded white paper that Law had completely ignored in his curiosity, were three short lines of text.

 _Kikoku_

 _Do not open_

 _Cursed sword_

That explained the sensation, Law thought, and looked down at his hands. He had just held and swung around _a cursed sword_ , the kind of weapon swordsmen with any knowledge shied away from. Now, Law was no idiot, he knew some of the stories running around about cursed swords. The most famous ones were the Kitetsu, swords so good that they had made it into the Graded Swords list. They had the unfortunate habit of causing their wielder's death, and no swordsman who knew about them wanted to wield them.

Law wondered if Kikoku had that same habit, or if its curse was something different. Did he count as a wielder if he had only used it a few minutes? He shrugged, because thinking about it didn't really matter. If he counted, then worrying wouldn't change anything, and if he didn't count, there was no reason to worry. Law did wonder, however, if he was lucky enough to overpower the curse. There were legends, after all, about how it was possible to wield a cursed sword without dying if the wielder's luck was stronger than the curse.

Whatever the case, what Law did know for sure was that selling this sword would be complicated. While it was well made, many people were capable of telling apart a cursed sword the same way that Law had been able to tell there was something off about it. Very few swordsmen would buy it, and that limited the options to collectors who didn't have the skill to feel anything from it, and that could be a problem. Kikoku was a beautiful sword, and looked impressive enough that it would look well exposed, but Law was willing to bet it was not one of the Graded Swords, and that would made it a lot less attractive to rich collectors. He didn't know the list by heart, had barely browsed it in passing, but he figured if whoever had written that note knew its name it was likely they would have known whether or not it was a Graded Sword. Those were more expensive, after all, and things people and shops boasted about owning.

Law would have to check it anyway. He was the one sorting through these weapons, and that meant he would be the one in charge of selling them as well.

Remembering that, Law grimaced and decided he had wasted enough time. There was a pile of undoubtedly stupid decorative weapons waiting on the floor to be sorted, and he didn't want to leave them lying around by the time he had to go to dinner. Which, Law pulled his pocket watch out to check the time, would be in a little over an hour.

The crew had a thing for eating together whenever possible.

He stood up and approached the cases strewn around the large box.

Katana, rapier, gem-encrusted broadsword —Law really didn't understand the obsession with gems— _ivory knife_ , katana, weird sword that didn't fit any class he had ever seen, impractical silver vambraces that wouldn't resist more than two blows, jeweled bisento that looked suspiciously like a jeweled version of the one Whitebeard carried in some newspaper pictures…

Law glanced at Kikoku's case for the umpteenth time since he had started. He hadn't even realized that he was doing it at first, but he noticed a pattern easily once he did realize: whenever he concluded the object he was examining was absolutely useless as a weapon, he glanced at Kikoku.

Checking the time again, Law saw the hour was up. It seemed to him like more time had passed, but of course it hadn't, he had just been bored out of his mind. Most of these objects didn't have to be tested to see if they would work in a fight because it was clear with a glance that their only use would be to smash them into an opponent's head, and Law was good enough at identifying if an object was made of precious materials such as gold and gems or if it was just fake —no fake ones so far— that he did it quickly. Estimating a price would come later, once everything was sorted through.

He glanced at Kikoku again.

Shaking his head, Law put the bisento replica wannabe back into its case and stood up. He moved to stand right before Kikoku's case and stared down on its surface. He was curious, he was _very_ _curious_. And he had liked handling Kikoku. It was true that it was far longer than any weapon he had used before, and it would take some time for him to be able to use it comfortably and at the same level of skill that he had with other weapons, but still… As much as he hated to think about it, Law _had_ an almost unbelievable skill for surviving impossible circumstances. He would never call it _luck_ , not given the events that had surrounded those instances, but he wondered if that skill was the sort of thing needed to be able to wield a cursed sword.

He would have to try and see what happened.

Law had already passed his life expectancy, and he had never been the type of person to not do something for fear of the consequences.

His mind made up, Law crouched down and opened the lid again. He reached first for the scabbard, then Kikoku, and sheathed it. He stood up and rested it over his shoulder. It was uncomfortable compared to the katana he had been carrying at the hip for the last two years, but he figured he would get used to it. Or he could always carry it on his back, though right now he wasn't tall enough to carry it straight, and Kikoku was too long to be carried at an angle on the back.

* * *

As was his custom, Law was one of the last to make it into the mess hall. Nobody paid him much attention when he walked in, as they all were eating already and absorbed in their own conversations. That was until Jora's eyes landed on him as he sat down and she did a double take.

"What's that?" she asked, effectively drawing everyone's attention to him. Law didn't need to follow her line of sight to know she was looking at Kikoku, now propped against the wall behind Law's chair.

"My new sword."

Predictably, half the table found the notion amusing.

"That thing's as tall as you!" Diamante snickered.

"For now," Law told him, and switched a slice of beef into his plate. He had long since stopped being affected by the jabs at his height: Law had grown a lot lately, and while he knew he would never be as tall as the executives, he would reach a decent height. Nobody seemed to have realized Law didn't care about it, though.

"You'll never be tall enough to not look ridiculous toting that around," Trebol added, laughing, and Law decided to bite back a comment about snot and ugly clothes. He didn't think he would be punished for it, but the executives could be really petty sometimes and Law decided he had tested his luck enough for today as it was.

Kikoku rose from its place against the wall and flew to Doflamingo's hand, drawn by a thin thread that Law had barely learned how to spot recently. Doflamingo's threads were really hard to spot, even if you _knew_ they were there. Law thought it an accomplishment that he could see them now.

Doflamingo turned Kikoku over in his palm, examining it.

"This sword is cursed, did you know?"

Buffalo, sitting next to Law, and Jora, sitting in front of Doflamingo, jumped back and away from the table, exclaiming to keep that thing away from them. It was oddly reminiscent of the time they had learned Law suffered from Amber Lead Syndrome.

Law shrugged.

"Yeah, I sensed it."

"You sensed it?" Doflamingo asked, chuckling in a way Law knew to interpret as pleased. "Well, it's really up to you if you want to try your luck," he said, and sent Kikoku back to its place behind Law.

"You're just saying that?!" Jora asked, scandalized. "We can't have something so dangerous here, Young Master!"

Doflamingo sighed in the way he did whenever he had to explain something he believed should be obvious, which was often.

"If you don't try to use it, it's not going to hurt you. A weapon's curse only affects its wielder."

"You're going to let him keep something so dangerous?" Lao G asked, and Law frowned at him. He didn't appreciate being talked about as if he wasn't present, and he appreciated even less to be doubted.

"As I said, it's Law's choice. Besides, I think he's one of the people who could overcome a curse."

Law felt pleased at the vote of confidence, and the topic was dropped once it became clear that Law wasn't going to change his mind about keeping Kikoku, no matter how much some people insisted.

 **To be continued**


	8. Chapter 8

…Two days late, but here I am with the new chapter.

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

The room's door opened, and Law raised his head from the notebook where he had been scribbling useful facts and ideas for the development of a new technique. He had half expected Baby 5 —or maybe Dellinger, who lately had taken to barging into rooms uninvited and then running off, giggling all the while— but he had not been expecting Senor Pink. Pink had been gone for four days straight now, and theories had started to flow. They had returned from a mission four days ago, and Pink had announced he intended to tell Russian the truth. He had bought a bouquet of flowers that Baby 5 had swooned over and left looking like a man walking to his execution. As the days passed, jokes about how Russian might have actually killed him had started, though the main theory was that Pink had been too busy begging for forgiveness and debasing himself to drop by and tell them how it had gone.

Looking at him now Law thought he looked like someone whose world had been ripped off from around him. His eyes were empty, his face appeared sunken and he looked unkempt. Law doubted he had slept or eaten at all since leaving the base.

Law put the pen down and turned on his chair to face him.

"What happened?"

"Could you come with me?" Pink asked in a low voice that held none of his usual composure.

Law nodded and stood up. He reached for Kikoku before following Pink out of the room and through the hallways, clearly to the entrance. They walked in silence. Law didn't press for an explanation, even though he knew he would need one if Pink wanted his help for anything. Pink would speak in his own time, and pressuring him wouldn't make him do it faster. Law was familiar enough with the look in his eyes to be able to tell as much.

It wasn't until they were winding through the mostly deserted early morning streets that Pink spoke.

"Gimlet is dead."

It took most of Law's self-control not to stop dead. Gimlet was Pink's son, who had been born three weeks early but who the doctors had assured, after he had spent the necessary time in the incubator, was healthy and would grow up just fine.

"I'm sorry," Law said, aware of how little words like those meant but knowing that not saying anything at all would be even worse.

Pink nodded.

"Russian tried to contact me when he fell ill and discovered I didn't work at the bank. We argued and she ran despite the storm. She's…" he trailed off, his voice having lost strength as he spoke, and stopped. Law did, too, and wasn't surprised to find they were standing before the hospital.

"I'll have a look," Law said, but couldn't promise anything. If Pink had brought him here, it meant whatever Russian had was not something the doctors could treat. Law entertained the thought that maybe Pink simply wanted to hurry the treatment along, but discarded it. Pink was far too grim for that scenario.

"Thank you," Pink said softly.

They walked inside and soon ran into a nurse who looked at Pink with sympathetic eyes that Law would never want aimed at himself. She gave Law a curious look before her eyes landed on Kikoku and she turned more apprehensive. She opened her mouth, probably to tell Law some nonsense about weapons not being allowed in the hospital, before catching sight of Pink again. The sympathy was back tenfold in her eyes and she closed her mouth, no doubt deciding she didn't want to give Pink more trouble.

She led them to a closed door at the second floor, and left when Pink asked if she could bring the results of all the tests they had done on Russian.

Pink visibly steeled himself before opening the door, and Law walked in behind him. Law had seen a few pictures of Russian, Pink would show them to anybody who listened, and Law came to a stop at the door. There was no trace in Russian of the spirit that had been so clear in the pictures, no confident smile and no determined eyes. Her face was slack, devoid of any emotion, and her eyes were vacant and unfocused.

Russian didn't react at all at their entrance, and she didn't appear to even hear Pink's words when he greeted her with forced cheer and introduced Law. Law swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable, and walked into the room.

Neurology wasn't his strong suit. Over the last five years he had focused mostly on physical injuries and illnesses they were likely to come across, as that was the knowledge most necessary in a pirate crew and physical injuries were the vast majority of situations he had to deal with. Most other fields he had studied sporadically, more out of curiosity than anything else.

The door opened, but it wasn't the nurse who came in. Instead, a doctor entered carrying a file that was too thick for a patient who had spent only four days here. He greeted Pink, whom he obviously already knew, and handed the file over when asked, though it was clear by his face that he didn't see the point in this. He looked even more confused when Pink, in turn, handed the folder to Law without a word. Law moved to one of the two chairs in the room to read, and tuned out the doctor's question about him.

Russian was in a vegetative state and her chances of recovery were very low. So low, in fact, that Law suspected the only reason they hadn't been marked as zero was because many doctors were reluctant to give absolute replies with no room for uncertainty —given Law's own miraculous recovery, he counted himself amongst those who didn't brush something off as impossible. One of the many disheartening facts was that the tests hadn't been able to pinpoint the exact damage Russian had suffered, and without that knowledge Law couldn't do anything.

So Law jumped to his feet, walked up to Russian's bedside and summoned his _Room_. He ignored the doctor's outraged cry when he performed the first cut. Pink would ensure no one got in his way; Law had to concentrate now.

* * *

Law walked through the base's hallways in a daze.

He had found the exact damage Russian had suffered and he hadn't even had time to feel satisfaction about having done something that a bunch of doctors with expensive equipment hadn't managed. Because he couldn't fix it. Oh, he was sure the Ope Ope no Mi had the capability to fix it, but _Law_ didn't. He lacked the necessary knowledge, and he lacked the accuracy and skill that would be necessary to operate in the human brain.

Law couldn't do a damn thing, not without time to prepare and learn first. He hadn't said it out loud, but it was extremely unlikely for Russian to last that long, and everybody aware of their surroundings in that room had understood it.

Law had told Pink to take as long as he needed to come back, promising he would tell the crew what had happened, and so Law did. He entered the main room, where Doflamingo was going over their giant list of things to get done before setting sail —over half the items were crossed out by now— Monet was meticulously going through a newspaper, dissecting article after article for every useful piece of information, Sugar sat next to Monet demolishing a bowl of grapes with Dellinger trying unsuccessfully to steal some from her, and Trebol was slobbering over some documents he was checking.

"Gimlet is dead, and Russian is going to die soon," Law said without preamble, and all movement in the room froze.

They all looked at him, caught between surprised and unsure of how to react to Law's blunt words.

"How long?" Doflamingo finally asked.

"Not much. I don't think she'll last until we move. Pink's staying at the hospital for now."

Doflamingo nodded.

His job done, Law turned around and left. He had missed breakfast and lunch, but he wasn't hungry, and went straight to his room. Once the door was firmly closed behind him, he let the last thought that had been in his mind resurface.

Pink had thanked him.

Law had been unable to help Russian, useless because _he didn't know enough_ , effectively blocking the only thing they knew of that could have saved Russian, and yet Pink had thanked him. For trying, he had said.

 _Trying_ wasn't worth a damn.

Trying wouldn't stop Russian from dying, trying wouldn't save Pink the pain of holding onto the faintest, needling hope that _maybe, just maybe_ something would come up and save her. Trying didn't change the fact that he would spend countless hours sitting on a hospital chair talking about things as if there actually existed a possibility for a future _afterwards_ , attempting to act strong, smile and pretend things would turn alright in the end because _surely_ something would happen. Trying didn't change the fact that he had already lost someone who he loved, that it was just a matter of time before she would follow. She might die with him there, or he might arrive one day at the hospital and be told she had died while he was away. But, whatever the case, he would have no chance to say goodbye, because he would be holding onto the hope that _something would happen_ until it was too late for a goodbye.

At least, Law thought, there would be no fire involved. Hopefully.

He raised a hand to his face. He hadn't even realized he had started crying, and now his cheeks were wet. He, too, had slid down the door and was now sitting on the floor.

At some point, he had stopped thinking about Pink.

And, really, Law should have known better than to start thinking about loss and death.

* * *

Over the following weeks, Law's insomnia worsened. Nightmares of Flevance, which had grown fewer and far between over the years, resurfaced. There was always a dream, a _memory_ , ready to attack him every night; his parents' deaths, the fire where Lami died and the coast with the Sister and his friends' bodies strewn about prominent amongst them. It was worse when the dreams weren't memories, but possible scenarios instead. Sometimes he saw what might have been Lami's room during the fire, Lami calling for him to save her while Law was halfway across town, other times he agreed to leave on the supposed refugee ship, and was there when they were shot to death. Worse yet were those scenarios in which someone else survived with him, because he would wake up only to find it wasn't true.

Every morning —or late night, more often than not— Law tried to forget about the dreams, but never managed it, and the following night he went to bed with the memories fresh in his mind.

It didn't help that he had a constant reminder of grief.

Senor Pink was clearly sleeping as little as Law did, and spent every waking hour at the hospital. One day, Pink showed up wearing a baby's bonnet —Law morbidly thought it might even be Gimlet's— and continued to wear it the following days. Most of the crew found it hilarious.

"Do you think he'll get better?" Baby 5 asked Law one day, after they saw Pink leave wearing diapers. "I know he's sad now, but he'll get better and go back to normal, right?"

Law shrugged.

"I don't know. I'm not exactly an example of dealing with grief in a healthy way, am I?" Because Law had joined the most dangerous pirate crew in the entire North Blue and sought to destroy the world in response to his own losses. And Law wished the thought hadn't crossed his mind, because that night he dreamed of his parents telling him how disappointed they were in his life choices, and Lami cowering behind their father and crying because she was afraid of Law the Pirate.

Law didn't try to sleep for three days straight after that, and the only reason he went to sleep the fourth day was because someone slipped a sleeping drug into his food.

* * *

They set sail a month after Law's fifteenth birthday. Despite having known their approximate parting date for months most of the packing was done in a hurry during the last few days. It felt odd to live in a ship after such a long time at the same base. It hadn't crossed Law's mind until they were leaving, but they had spent nearly two years at the same place without the marines finding out their location. Ever since Corazon had left. That at least proved the marines' information network wasn't good.

They crossed Reverse Mountain at night, and the entire crew stood at the railing to admire the spectacle that was the entrance into the Grand Line once they had made sure they wouldn't crash into the Red Line. Despite their foreknowledge of how Reverse Mountain worked it was a close call.

The route that they chose to follow through Paradise had been carefully selected to be the most beneficial for business of all seven routes available. Law had been an active part of the selection process in a fashion: while the decision had been up to Doflamingo and the executives, Doflamingo had decided to use it to test Law on his knowledge and his strategic and deductive skills. Law had done pretty well, if he said so himself.

Law was looking forward to sailing the Grand Line. North Blue had grown boring some time ago, ever since he had stopped finding opponents that posed a challenge —the only exception was Tsuru's crew, and without Corazon to tip them off about the Donquixote Pirates' whereabouts they barely ran into them nowadays. Law had grown considerably stronger over the past two years, surpassing a few members of the crew, and he wanted to test himself.

There was also an island in this route that Law really wanted to visit.

* * *

Finding a log pose outside of the Grand Line was a complicated task, finding an eternal pose had been a far more difficult one. Yet, it was a necessity. The major inconvenience of their route was an island known as Little Garden, where they would have had to wait an entire year for their log pose to set. Finding the specific eternal pose for the island following that one had taken months, the main reason Doflamingo had decided they could take their time to leave everything in order back in North Blue.

The island following Little Garden was a kingdom named Drum. The kingdom itself held no particular interest for their operations: its new king had been implementing increasingly tyrannical policies since he had been crowned, and commerce with Drum was becoming more and more restricted as time passed. That could present interesting opportunities for the black market in the future, but the information Doflamingo had hinted that the citizens weren't desperate or angry enough for anything big and lucrative like attempting a coup d'état. Yet.

They would try their best to create connections into whatever passed for a black market in Drum.

The only person who was excited to go there was Law. It made sense, of course, given that the only things Drum Kingdom was renowned for were its doctors and medical advancements. Law would be free to roam as much as he wanted instead of helping with business there, because anything new Law learned about medicine would be an advantage for the entire Family.

Before following the eternal pose to Drum Kingdom, though, they would stop at Whiskey Peak. The island wasn't anything special, just a bunch of lowlifes and criminals living in an unforgiving rock, and yet the nature of its inhabitants and its proximity to Reverse Mountain could make it an interesting place to deal with.

* * *

Two days of sailing, three weeks of boring shady talk and subtle threats at Whiskey Peak and nearly two straight weeks of sailing after that following the eternal pose found the Donquixote Pirates anchored at a small port in the Drum Kingdom. It was odd to be back into snow and chilling air after over a month spent in mainly temperatures warmer than the average summer in half the islands of North Blue, but unlike Buffalo —who had made it clear how much he preferred spring and summer weather- Law didn't mind the cold.

No, Law couldn't care any less about the weather. He had thrown on the first adequate winter coat he had found in his closet, stuffed his wallet full of money into a pocket and jumped down to the port with Kikoku over his shoulder.

He entered the first bookstore he came across and walked through the aisles, checking if there was any new release of a journal since he had left North Blue, given that bookstores in Whiskey Peak were little more than an urban legend. He looked over the display of recently released magazines and journals and frowned.

"Don't you have any medical journals?"

The shopkeeper, the only other person present in the store, gasped and dropped the book he had been reading. He brusquely shushed Law.

"Don't say something like that! Are you crazy?!" he hissed hurriedly, looking around as if he expected a monster to jump at him out of nowhere.

Law's frown deepened, and he walked up to the counter.

"What's wrong about what I said?"

Apparently satisfied that there was no one around, the shopkeeper focused his attention on Law. He eyed Kikoku warily before looking him in the eye. He relaxed somewhat, maybe making the mistake of thinking Law was too young to pose a threat.

"You're not from here, are you kid?"

"No," Law replied, and the only reason he refrained from saying he wasn't a kid was the constant teasing he was subjected to whenever he said it around the crew. Unlike comments about his height, jabs regarding his age did bother him. He made a point of only thinking it these days and, if the comment had been offensive, he took revenge on whoever had called him _kid_.

"Why… Why are you interested in medicine?" the shopkeeper very nearly whispered, his eyes darting suspiciously to the door.

"I'm a doctor," Law replied, and added a hint of challenge into his voice, daring him to argue on basis that Law was too young.

But the shopkeeper didn't care about Law's age, he was too busy looking at him in horror and shushing him even louder than before.

"Don't say that!"

"Why not?" Law demanded, annoyed but curious to know what was going on.

Looking around one last time, the shopkeeper took a step back.

"Just a moment." He rummaged through the cupboards below the counter and came up with a crumpled piece of paper that he placed on the counter. "Here it is. This came out two weeks ago."

Law picked it up and flattened it before reading.

It was a royal edict.

* * *

Law was in a horrible mood.

He had returned to the ship late the first night after they had anchored at Drum cursing and muttering about stupid kings, assholes and heads. After Buffalo had asked him what was wrong and ended up stuck in pieces to the deck, there had been an unanimous decision to let Law cool down on his own before anyone approached him.

Still, Doflamingo was curious. He had asked Jora and Lao G to investigate if there was anything concerning Drum's king that could anger Law so much while they restocked the ship, and the reason turned out to be very easy to unearth.

Two weeks prior to their arrival, King Wapol had outlawed doctors. Only twenty doctors that would be under his every order were allowed to practice, and any citizen in need of a doctor would have to petition him. All other doctors could either leave the kingdom or be executed.

According to the information Doflamingo had received, there had been a few executions of doctors who had protested this new law already.

After this, Doflamingo decided to keep Law by his side for the duration of their stay, in case Law ran into some doctor-related conflict and decided to interfere out of anger at the sheer stupidity of the situation. Law took a lot of pride in his profession, after all, and found the situation unacceptable.

They didn't stay much longer in Drum. As Doflamingo had suspected, the citizens were too afraid to start any kind of lucrative rebellion against the king, but the Family had managed to drop a couple hints on more promising ears that they would be happy to provide weapons if things changed.

Following Drum, there was a nearby lawless island that could prove interesting and, after that, Alabasta.

Doflamingo really wanted to talk to Crocodile. That was a really interesting business partner. Because Doflamingo didn't believe even for a moment Crocodile's façade of a Shichibukai that actually stuck to the government's rules and protected people. There had to be an ulterior motive in Crocodile's actions.

 **To be continued**

* * *

We don't know for sure whether or not Drum was part of the route the Strawhats originally followed in Paradise given how they got there, but I am working under the assumption that it was. Ace left the message at Drum that he would wait for Luffy at Alabasta, and the only reason he could think there was even a possibility that Luffy could go to Alabasta from Drum (if Luffy happened to go to Drum at all) was if they're in the same route, because Ace had no way of knowing Alabasta was the Strawhats' destination or that they had an eternal pose for it. We also know that they didn't follow the route's normal path after Drum. Not only did they follow the eternal pose, but Robin pointed out that the island following Alabasta was an autumn island. Skypiea took them a different way, and thus we can't know if the islands that the Strawhats visited afterwards are part of the standard path of the route.


End file.
